Great success for niche channel

01.03.2022 - RADIONYTT.NO - Kyrre Dahl

Listeners flocked to NRK Sport during the Winter Olympics. The niche channel has never had so many listeners.

NRK Sport is a niche channel produced by the publicly owned Norwegian Broadcasting Company. As the name suggests, NRK Sport broadcasts different kinds of Sporting events but also pop music and news. It is available nationwide in Norway on DAB or online.

Normally, NRK Sport has only a small group of listeners, but the channel can reach 2% or 3% of the population during large events. But during the Beijing Olympics in 2022, the number of listeners skyrocketed.

During the best week, week 6, NRK Sport experienced a daily listening of 8,2 %. Week 7 was almost as good at 7.9 %, according to PPM figures from Nielsen Media Research. This means that more than 400 000 listened to the Olympics on NRK Sport.

There were only two channels that had more listeners these weeks, NRK P1 og the commercial P4. There are now around 30 national channels in Norway, so becoming number 3 is quite an achievement.

- We have noticed that people go to NRK Sport during major sporting events and we are pleased to see this also applies for the Winter Olympics, says station manager Eva Midthun Leira.

- Winter olympics was a lot better than the summer olympics last year, when we had a market share of 3,3 %, says Midthun Leira to radionytt.no.

NRK Sport broadcasted 12 hours of sport a day during the Winter Olympics, which was a great success for the Norwegian participants.

This story in Norwegian: Over 400 000 lytter på OL på NRK Sport