After 16 intense and emotional days, the London 2012 Olympics has flown by. A herculean effort has been made by broadcasters around the globe to ensure coverage of the Games was constantly available to their audiences and at the touch of a button. NBC’s TV footage of the Games has been deemed ‘the most-watched television event in U.S. history’ successfully attracting 219.4 million viewers. It also trounced online records, recording nearly two billion page views and 159 million video streams of Olympics coverage. While on the other side of the pond, the BBC has reported that its overall Olympics TV coverage reached 51.9 million people, with 106 million requests for Olympic video content across all online platforms, more than double the amount of requests for any other event.

So, what has the 30th Olympiad told us about our viewing habits? In a poll of 100 visitors to the RGB Networks blog looking into how they were planning to watch the Olympics, we gained some intriguing insight into the consumption habits of our readers.

One key revelation is that more of our respondents (30 percent) planned to watch the Games on a PC/laptop than on a TV (28 percent) in a remarkable break away from traditional TV viewing habits. Indeed, nearly 70 percent of our readers said the way they were watching the Games this year differed from past years. Moreover, nearly 28 percent of respondents estimated they would watch online while at work – a trend that is sure to grow given the breadth of content and streaming capabilities available online.

With nearly 16 percent watching on their mobile phones while on the move, the survey further indicates that our readers were expecting to be able to access coverage of what they wanted to see, wherever they wanted to see it. This is reflected in NBC’s two Olympic TV Everywhere mobile apps which were ranked the #1 and #2 most-downloaded apps of the week on iTunes.

Forty-two percent of our respondents stated that they would definitely supplement their viewing experience with the use of a second screen. Billed as the first ever ‘truly digital games,’ viewers harnessed the use of social media platforms in record numbers to ensure they could constantly interact with the record-breakers and comment on events as they unfolded. Looking at Twitter numbers alone, a phenomenal 150 million tweets referencing the Olympics were generated over the duration – 9.66 million tweets captured the flurry of the opening ceremony while an astonishing 80,000 tweets a minute were posted as Usain Bolt swept the 200 meter sprint!

It has been thrilling to watch London 2012 unfold as a truly multi-platform event and one that catered directly to viewer’s demands. As sure evidence of things to come, our poll shows a growing trend of multiscreen viewing across multiple platforms and notably, the use of a second screen to complement the principal viewing experience. If there is anything we can learn from the raft of spectacular athletes that flew across our screens in those captivating 16 days, video service providers need to ‘go for gold’ with the best infrastructure systems in place for the next phase of multiscreen delivery. Without a comprehensive TV Everywhere plan, providers are sure to fall behind the competition as viewer expectations continue to change.