MAM
London Olympics draws record viewership
MUMBAI: London Olympics started with an exceptional performance especially in the United Kingdom with 23.5 million viewers tuning in for the opening ceremony on BBC1 for an 82.3 per cent market share, making it the top of the year so far, according to Eurodata TV Worldwide trends.
Viewing figures were also high across the World for the spectacular opening ceremony. In France the event gathered great audiences on TF1 with 8.7 million viewers and a 56.9 per cent market share, that is to say a better score compared to Beijing 2008 (5 million viewers on France 2).
Over in Germany on ZDF, 7.6 million sports fans watched the event for a 43.5 per cent market share. Although this matched results for Beijing, it nonetheless represents a drop compared to Athens 2004, partly due to the length of the ceremony added to the time difference.
Among Spanish audiences on La 1, the event gathered 5.6 million viewers with 46.1 per cent market share, more than doubling the results of Athens 2004. This huge rise demonstrates that the Spanish are more and more enthusiastic for sports in general, thanks to the incredible success of local athletes and teams.
Italians also appreciated the Opening Ceremony with more than 5.5 million people tuning in on Rai 1 with a market share of 42.6 per cent, in line with previous Games.
In China, despite a big time difference, CCTV1, CCTV5 and CCTV News realised good figures (all three channels combined) with 22.2 million viewers and a 49 per cent market share. It is the proof that the previous Olympics created a keen interest.
The data used is from multiple sources to capture the viewership of the various countries. These are: Eurodata TV Worldwide; Médiamétrie (France); Nielsen (USA); Auditel (Italy); BARB (UK); AGF,GfK Fernsehforschung (Germany); CSM Media Research (China); Kantar Media (Spain).
The women’s football competition started with a big match between two favourites for the gold medal: France and the USA. This game, the remake of the 2011 FIFA World Cup semi-final, achieved great audience in France with 1 million viewers and a 8.8 per cent market share on France 4, compared to a 2.2 per cent channel average market share over the first semester of 2012.
In the UK, BBC1 gathered 1.8 million viewers and a 18.3 per cent market share for the game between Great Britain and New Zealand. These results demonstrate the increasing support for women’s football, as it commands increasingly impressive TV audiences.
Men’s basketball started with big expectations on Sunday. The new US Dream Team was up against France, one of the strongest challengers. On France 3, the game was followed by 3.9 million viewers and a market share of 33.3 per cent. The match was a huge success both for the spectacular game and the impressive TV audience figures taking into account the usual little regular exposure of basketball.
Road cycling, one of the most popular competitions, took place on 28 Saturday. Reason: Bradley Wiggins won the Tour de France in July, his appearance at the Opening Ceremony once again, stoking British enthusiasm for the sport.
In the UK, BBC3 averaged 788,100 viewers with a 7.7 per cent market share for the race and peaked at 2 million viewers (18.5 per cent market share) just before the last hope for a British medal disappeared in this race.
Eurodata TV Worldwide vice-president Jacques Braun said, “The United Kingdom is known worldwide as a country of sports tradition, so this event could be seen as a symbolic return to their roots. Furthermore, the Euro 2012, the NBA Finals, the Tour de France and Wimbledon were great boosters for this amazing sports summer with the performances of Bradley Wiggins and Andy Murray. The performance of cycling in this Olympics demonstrates again the ingredients of TV ratings success: a whole country or city getting behind their hero with medals at stake.”
MAM
Nielsen launches co-viewing pilot to sharpen TV measurement
Super Bowl pilot to refine how shared TV audiences are counted
MUMBAI: Nielsen is taking a fresh stab at one of television’s oldest blind spots: how many people are actually watching the same screen. The audience-measurement giant on February 4 unveiled a co-viewing pilot that uses wearable devices to better capture shared viewing, starting with America’s biggest broadcast stage.
The trial begins with Super Bowl LX on NBC on February 8, 2026, before extending to other high-profile live sports and entertainment events in the first half of the year. The goal is simple but commercially potent: count viewers more accurately, especially during live spectacles that pull families and friends to one screen.
The new approach leans on Nielsen’s proprietary wearable meters, wrist-worn devices that resemble smartwatches. These passively capture audio signatures from TV content, logging exposure to shows, films and live events without requiring viewers to sign in or self-report. In theory, fewer clicks, fewer lapses, better data.
Karthik Rao, Nielsen’s ceo, cast the move as part of a broader measurement push. He said the company’s task is to keep pushing accuracy as clients invest heavily in live programming that draws mass audiences. The co-viewing pilot, he added, builds on upgrades such as Big Data + Panel measurement, out-of-home expansion, live-streaming metrics and wearable-based tracking.
Co-viewing is not new territory for Nielsen, which has long tried to estimate how many people sit before a single set. What is new is the heavier integration of wearables and passive detection to reduce reliance on active inputs from panel homes.
For now, the pilot comes with caveats. Co-viewing estimates from the trial will not be folded into Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel ratings, which remain the industry’s trading currency. Instead, pilot findings will be shared with clients a few weeks after final Big Data + Panel ratings are delivered. Clients may disclose those findings publicly.
More impact data will follow later this year. Full integration into Nielsen’s marketing-intelligence suite is slated as a longer-term play, with a target of bringing co-viewing into currency measurement for the 2026–2027 season. This is only phase one, with further co-viewing enhancements planned beyond 2026 and additional timelines to be announced.
The push fits a wider pattern. Nielsen has in recent years expanded big-data integration, adopted first-party data for live-streaming measurement and broadened out-of-home tracking. It also positions itself as the reference point for streaming metrics through products such as The Gauge and the Nielsen Streaming Top 10.
In a market where billions of ad dollars hinge on decimal points, counting who is in the room matters. If Nielsen can pin down shared viewing, the humble sofa could become prime measurement real estate. The race to count every eyeball just found a new wrist to watch.
Brands
Delhivery chairman Deepak Kapoor, independent director Saugata Gupta quit board
Gurugram: Delhivery’s boardroom is being reset. Deepak Kapoor, chairman and independent director, has resigned with effect from April 1 as part of a planned board reconstitution, the logistics company said in an exchange filing. Saugata Gupta, managing director and chief executive of FMCG major Marico and an independent director on Delhivery’s board, has also stepped down.
Kapoor exits after an eight-year stint that included steering the company through its 2022 stock-market debut, a period that saw Delhivery transform from a venture-backed upstart into one of India’s most visible logistics platforms. Gupta, who joined the board in 2021, departs alongside him, marking a simultaneous clearing of two senior independent seats.
“Deepak and Saugata have been instrumental in our process of recognising the need for and enabling the reconstitution of the board of directors in line with our ambitious next phase of growth,” said Sahil Barua, managing director and chief executive, Delhivery. The statement frames the exits less as departures and more as deliberate succession, a boardroom shuffle timed to the company’s evolving scale and strategy.
The resignations arrive amid broader governance recalibration. In 2025, Delhivery appointed Emcure Pharmaceuticals whole-time director Namita Thapar, PB Fintech founder and chairman Yashish Dahiya, and IIM Bangalore faculty member Padmini Srinivasan as independent directors, signalling a tilt towards consumer, fintech and academic expertise at the board level.
Kapoor’s tenure spanned Delhivery’s most defining years, rapid network expansion, public listing and the push towards profitability in a bruising logistics market. Gupta’s presence brought FMCG and brand-scale perspective during a period when ecommerce volumes and last-mile delivery economics were being rewritten.
The twin exits, effective from the new financial year, underscore a familiar corporate rhythm: founders consolidate, veterans rotate out, and fresh voices are ushered in to script the next chapter. In India’s hyper-competitive logistics race, even the boardroom does not stand still.
MAM
Meta appoints Anuvrat Rao as APAC head of commerce partnerships
At Locofy.ai, Rao helped convert a three-year free beta into a paid engine, clocking 1,000 subscribers and 15 enterprise clients within ten days of launch in September 2024. The low-code startup, backed by Accel and top tech founders, is famed for turning designs into production-ready code using proprietary large design models.
Before that, Rao founded generative AI venture 1Bstories, which was acquired by creative AI platform Laetro in mid-2024, where he briefly served as managing director for APAC. Alongside operating roles, he has been an active investor and advisor since 2020, backing startups such as BotMD, Muxy, Creator plus, Intellect, Sealed and CricFlex through a creator-economy-led thesis.
Rao spent over eight years at Google, holding senior partnership roles across search, assistant, chrome, web and YouTube in APAC, and earlier cut his teeth in strategy consulting at OC&C in London and investment finance at W. P. Carey in Europe and the US.
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