More people watched Olympic Games opening than royal wedding

The Olympic Games opening ceremony was watched by more people than the royal wedding last year, an International Olympic Committee (IOC) marketing official said in London on Tuesday.

The audience in Britain peaked at 27 million as BBC broadcasted the opening ceremony July 27, according to Timo Lumme, who is in charge of the IOC's television and marketing services. It was reported that the peak audience figure for the royal wedding was around 20 million, reports Xinhua.

Lumme hailed the success of the Olympic broadcasting. There is still almost a week to go before the Games close.

"I think London 2012 heralds a new era in Olympic broadcasting," said Lumme, who is from Finland. "Let me support that with some facts or some statements."

"Right now the London 2012 will reach viewers in more countries (and regions) than ever before, with an estimated global reach of 4.8 billion across every country (and region) of the world," he said.

"Just to clarify, the 4.8 billion viewers is the maximum reach, so that is the maximum number of people who have access to watch a television set in the world, and those figures are provided to us by rights-holding broadcasters. They tell us how many homes they are in, so we add it up with 4.8 billion," he explained.

According to Lumme, the traditional television coverage, still underpinning the Games broadcasting, could add up to a record-high 100,000 hours and the digital coverage is also likely to exceed the number.

Lumme said new technology also made these Games' broadcasting special.

"There are also a number of technological firsts. For example, there is 3D coverage, which has been taken up by a number of broadcasters around the world," he said.

"We are also testing something called super-high vision, which is effectively super-high definition, which is not available in the home yet but will be in the future," he added.