27 Million Viewers Watched Olympic Opening Ceremony

The Olympic opening ceremony dominated Friday evening viewing in the UK with an estimated audience of nearly 27 million viewers.

Unsurprisingly the Opening ceremony for the London 2012 Summer Olympics drew huge audiences to BBC One and left its competitors struggling to find viewers with several shows – such as Big Brother on Channel Five – tumbling to new ratings low. The opening ceremony, directed by Danny Boyle, drew an average audience of 22.4 million viewers to BBC One from 9pm onwards. Audiences peaked at a massive 27 million viewers during the opening ceremony.

Last night’s figure represents the highest UK audience for an Olympics opening ceremony in 20 years with Barcelona in 1992 drawing the previous largest draw of 11.3 million viewers. The Beijing opening ceremony in 2008 had just 5.0 million viewers by comparison but given the fact the games are taking place in the UK this time around rating figures were bound to be much higher.

The figure for the opening ceremony makes it one of the most watched programmes in UK television history though it was still some distance of the 30 million who tuned in at Christmas 1986 to London based soap EastEnders. That festive episode saw Den Watts (Leslie Grantham) serve his long-suffering wife Angie Watts (Anita Dobson) with divorce papers in the climax of a storyline that had gripped viewers for months. The BBC reports the Opening ceremony was the biggest BBC One show since an episodes of Only Fools and Horses in 1996 which drew 24 million viewers.

The opening ceremony has been widely well received by the UK press with particular praise for segments involving Daniel Craig as James Bond and Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean. It was widely suggested, before the opening ceremony, that the worldwide audience for the event could be as high as 1 billion viewers!