While traditional TV may still be the choice of most sports fans seeking coverage of Beijing 2008, there are signs that the Games are acting as something of a trojan horse for online video.

The Olympic Games is proving to be a big hit for the promotion of Web and mobile video, with official figures from the beginning of this week showing that online video traffic for the Games is up massively.

Huge Increase On Monday

Nielsen’s viewing figures for NBCOlympics.com show a huge increase from the amount of people watching on the Internet over the weekend compared to Monday.

This Olympic Games sees the Web competing for viewers with traditional TV for the first time in Olympic history. But will the Internet do as well as hoped?

I had high hopes that the Olympics Games in Beijing were going to be a high point for Web television, and prove that more people are turning to the Internet for coverage than ever before.

While it may be true that Beijing 2008 has more coverage online than any Olympics before it, and that the Web viewing figures are healthy so far, traditional TV is still beating it by a huge margin.

Are the big television networks finally getting a grasp on the digital age and what the Web means for their business? If NBC’s coverage of the Beijing 2008 opening ceremony is anything to go by, they still have a lot to learn.

NBC’s coverage of the Beijing 2008 Olympics has hit piracy issues on the first day of the Games. And it’s all because the TV network decided to delay broadcasting the opening ceremony for 12 hours.

Advertising Revenue Delay

The reason NBC did this was purely down to money – the opening ceremony started at 5am U.S. time, and this just wouldn’t bring in the advertising revenue that a prime time slot of 5pm would.

This kind of strategy would have been fine even just four years ago during the last Olympic Games. But times have changed, and the Web now offers people global access to events like this, live, unfettered, and not dependent on advertisers demands.

The amount of video available on the Web is increasing massively every month, but if metered broadband becomes the norm, don’t expect to be able to watch much of it.

Last Friday saw the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) uphold a complaint against Comcast for blocking BitTorrent traffic. The ISP was ordered to stop P2P throttling, and many other telecommunications companies praised the decision.

First Warning

However, any hope that this would mean metered broadband services would go the way of the dodo are unfounded, and in fact, we’ve now had our first example of a TV company warning customers with metered broadband from accessing its content.

NBC is planning on streaming 2,200 hours of coverage from the Olympic Games live over the Web, but what sort of effort is required to make this a reality?

The Beijing 2008 Olympic Games start on August 8th, and for the first time ever, the full games will be available to watch on the Web via NBCOlympics.com.

One Giant Experiment

We’ve already heard about the plans to televise the Games online, with 2,200 hours of live footage to be made available via the official website, although some severe restrictions mean many Internet users won’t be made welcome.

We’ve also spoken about how the online video coverage of the Olympics is going to be used as a kind of testing ground to research how people are watching the Games, and whether offering the coverage for free is a viable business model.

But we didn’t look at how the footage was actually going to be delivered to homes all around the world live and streaming across the Net. Which with so much coverage being planned, is a tall order.

From September, fans of American football will be able to watch NFL games live online for free. This is massive news, which signals a significant change of strategy from the National Football League.

The NFL has until now kept a tight rein on the rights to its games, but this move to the Web shows a willingness to move with the times and experiment with Internet streaming.

NBC Streams Live Online

According to the LA Times, NBC will make its television feed of Sunday Night Football, including play by play, and commentary from John Madden, available on multiple websites. Some will be NBC sites, while some will be owned by the league.

The last two years have seen online video reach the masses, and grow massively as a result. That trend has continued apace during the first half of 2008, with comScore revealing 12 billion videos were watched in the US during the month of May.

That 12 billion videos suggest a 45% increase on the same period last year, and shows a very healthy growth in online video. This is both from user-generated sites such as YouTube, and those providing streaming television, such as Hulu.

142 Million Uniques

Ars Technica reports that 142 million unique users watched video online in May, which counts for 74% of the total Internet users in the US, meaning 3 out of 4 people have watched some kind of video online.