It is known that the number of viewers in the United States for the opening ceremony of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, which opened on the 4th, has significantly decreased.
According to Reuters on the 6th, the number of viewers who watched the opening ceremony on TV in the United States was counted as 14 million.
Combined, the number of viewers on other media platforms, including online streaming services and mobile phone applications, is said to be just 16 million.
This is similar to the opening ceremony of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics last year, when only 16.7 million people attended, but it is a sharp decrease of 43% compared to 2018 Pyeongchang, where 28.3 million people attended.
The opening ceremony was held in Beijing at 8 pm local time, but in the US, it was 7 am in the East and 4 am in the West, which is analyzed as the main cause of the sharp drop in viewership.
However, since the 14 million viewers this time are the sum of the number of viewers of live broadcasts and delayed broadcasts during major evening hours, it seems inevitable that the evaluation of a box office failure is inevitable.
The opening ceremony of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics was held one hour earlier in the eastern and western parts of the United States than this time in Beijing.
The 'Diplomatic Boycott', which did not send a representative bullet from the government due to the human rights situation in China, is also cited as the background for the sharp drop in ratings.
Before the Beijing Winter Olympics began, 57% of Americans supported the US government's diplomatic boycott, and only 37% said they would watch the Olympics on TV.
(Photo = Yonhap News)