The hype has lived up to its potential for Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium.

With an average of 13.3 million Canadians tuning in for the entire opening ceremonies on Feb. 12, the Consortium is calling it the most-watched television event ever in Canadian history. In total, 23 million viewers tuned into the ceremony at some point.

The final tally from the evening, released Saturday, said the broadcast delivered an 84 share, or 84% of the population. Almost nine million of those viewers were watching CTV, it said. The peak of the evening was Team Canada’s entrance to BC Place at 7:14 p.m, with 15.4 million viewers.

Web-wise, the broadcast also did well, generating a million video views on CTVOlympics.ca and RDSolympiques.ca during the ceremony. The sites received a total of 1.6 million unique visitors over the course of the day.

The CUME index for the day – a statistic ranking the cumulative reach of all Canadians engaging with the Games across the Consortium’s TV, online, radio and print properties – indicated that 26 million Canadians experienced the Games through Corsortium media on Day 1, for a total of 78% of all Canadians.

Day 2

Canada’s hope for its first gold medal on home turf generated big numbers for the Consortium on Day 2, as Canada’s Jennifer Heil made her bid for women’s moguls gold Saturday evening.

Heil earned a silver medal that day, while the Consortium banked an average of 6.6 million viewers throughout the event, peaking at eight million viewers in the final minute. In total, 27 million Canadians watched some part of the Olympic coverage on TV throughout the course of Day 2.

The CUME index for the day indicated that 29.4 million Canadians engaged with the Games across all platforms.

MiC will be reporting daily CUME numbers throughout the Games, so watch this space.