Over 100 million people watched the royal wedding between Prince William and Catherine Middleton on YouTube. While that may not be able to compete with the number of people who watched it on television, it’s still a great number.
The Royal Wedding
The Royal Wedding was just the latest in a long line of tests for online video. It passed, and with flying colors, as it has with every other test it has faced.
The wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton was available to watch from a number of sources on the Web, but YouTube was the official site chosen, and thanks to its notoriety was the choice most people made.
On April 29 the happy couple finally made their alliance legal, and millions watched them do it online. So much for the supposed desire for a republic…
The Royal Wedding On YouTube
The royal wedding didn’t manage to break the Internet as predicted in some quarters. In fact, all the major sites held up as people viewed and commented on the event. But that doesn’t mean it was ignored, and actually millions of people ended up watching Wills and Kate get married on YouTube.
According to the Official YouTube Blog, the royal wedding was live streamed 72 million times as it was happening, with 29 million more people watching a rerun later that same day. That’s 101 million streams in total, making it a hugely successful undertaking for YouTube specifically and online video as a whole.
People from 188 countries watched the royal wedding, with the U.K., the U.S., Italy, Germany, and France being the top five countries for viewers.
The biggest moment of the whole event was when the young couple kissed on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, at which point the Google-owned site dealt with 100,000 additional requests.
Conclusions
The Internet succeeded and YouTube succeeded when it came to the royal wedding. 100 million is an amazing number of people who watched the coverage, and the fact 72 million people watched the event streaming live has to be considered a huge victory. Not just for the royal couple but for the sector as well.
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