The way we watch TV is changing, and that fact was glaringly apparent at this year’s Winter Olympics, which went down in history as the lowest-rated Games ever.
One-time figure skating gold medalist and current commentator Scott Hamilton joined Cheddar to discuss the numbers.
“How they’re measuring viewership is different now,” he told Cheddar Tuesday. “How do we know how many people are actually watching and being impacted by the Olympics? If it’s a second screen, if it’s internet viewing, it’s different.”
Ratings for the 2018 PyeongChang OIympics were down more than seven percent from the 2014 Sochi Games, according to [one report](http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/more-tv-news/2018-winter-olympics-ratings-are-down-but-nbc-is-still-happy/). The events averaged just over 22 million viewers this year, versus more than 23 million last time.
But Hamilton, who was relegated from NBC’s primetime figure skating coverage to its Sports Network’s “Olympic Ice” show, says the network was happy with the viewership overall.
“From where I was, and I was there in PyeongChang, they were happy,” he told Cheddar during the interview. “In the show that I did, the ratings for that particular time were quintuple what they received before.”
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/living-a-life-of-gold).
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The Twitter Esports Business Summit ran from Oct. 1-3, and it held its focus on the growing market of esports and how Twitter fits into the business. Rishi Chadha, head of gaming content partnerships at Twitter, said the company is focusing on the communities that foster players and fans, as well as publishers and developers of different platforms.
The team became the first in the NBA to introduce GIFs for the Facebook platform. Sandro Gasparro, director of social media for the Los Angeles Clippers, told Cheddar it's not just another way to promote engagement, but can also connect fans to players on a more personal level.
Ralf Reichert, CEO of ESL, sat down with Cheddar at this weekend's tournament at the Barclays Center and talked about the esports world and what he believes is needed for the enterprise to grow.
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Ron Darling, a former MLB starting pitcher and current TBS baseball analyst, said the easiest way to attract younger people to baseball is to get more kids playing it when they're kids. Darling said there are more children opting out of football due to concerns about head injuries, and those athletes should be primed to take up a different sport.
