Covering the 2012 Olympic bid process was a record-breaking exercise for GamesBids.com. Web site traffic, emails and media requests far exceeded the levels set during any other Olympic bids or Olympic Games since its coverage began in 1998. That doesn’t come as a big surprise considering the calibre of the bids and the resulting worldwide interest.
During the campaign GamesBids.com became an integral information hub in the process – making information, documents and schedules easy to find and available on a timely basis.
Listed below is the number of times the following documents were requested and served by GamesBids.com (from their availability date until July 15, 2005):
City: Web Site, Bid Book, Mini Bid Book
London: 45630, 26404, 8822
Paris: 43368, 15468, 15642
New York: 43250, 17312, 25292
Madrid: 38035, 12241, 8412
Moscow: 37144, 9705, 9094
IOC Candidature Acceptance Report: 21332
IOC Candidate Evaluation Report: 5046
Website traffic reached record-breaking levels during the first two weeks of July while news of the bid made international headlines. GamesBids.com recorded hits in the millions and several thousands of visitors daily.
Many of the visitors came from the following countries – the top ten in order – United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, France, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Mexico and Singapore. The traffic from Singapore spiked during the first few days of the month, coinciding with the IOC meetings in that country.
As GamesBids.com producer I handled dozens of media requests in the week surrounding the final vote providing on-air or printed remarks and giving background information. Our GamesBids.com team provided frequent and timely news updates as the events unfolded.
During the July 6 election traffic in our Olympic bid forums also hit record levels and for the first time in GamesBids.com forum history posting privileges had to be removed from several users in order to reduce stress on the system.
We were relieved and proud that our systems held up and provided 24/7 coverage with 100% uptime. Last year, a surge of visitors to our forums during the Athens 2004 opening ceremonies brought down our forums for several hours but our subsequent improvements helped alleviate that fate this time around.
Many thanks go out to all of our readers who have enjoyed GamesBids.com and provided valuable feedback, and to members of the bid committees and the IOC for keeping us up-to-date with news and information.
Only a week remains until the 2014 campaign begins. We’re ready!
