Dries Buytaert

As the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro enters its second and final week, it's worth noting that the last time I blogged about Drupal and the Olympics was way back in 2008 when I called attention to the fact that Nike was running its sponsorship site on Drupal 6 and using Drupal's multilingual capabilities to deliver their message in 13 languages.

While watching some track and field events on television, I also spent a lot of time on my laptop with the NBC Olympics website. It is a site that has run on Drupal for several years, and this year I noticed they took it up a notch and did a redesign to enhance the overall visitor experience.

Last week NBC issued a news release that it has streamed over one billion minutes of sports via their site so far. That's a massive number!

I take pride in knowing that an event as far-reaching as the Olympics is being delivered digitally to a massive audience by Drupal. In fact, some of the biggest sporting leagues around the globe run their websites off of Drupal, including NASCAR, the NBA, NFL, MLS, and NCAA. Massive events like the Super Bowl, Kentucky Derby, and the Olympics run on Drupal, making it the chosen platform for global athletic organizations.

Update on August 24: This week, the NBC Sports Group issued a press release stating that the Rio 2016 Olympics was the most successful media event in history! Digital coverage across NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app set records, with 3.3 billion total streaming minutes, 2.71 billion live streaming minutes, and 100 million unique users. According to the announcement, live streaming minutes for the Rio games nearly doubled that of all Olympic games combined, and digital coverage amassed 29 percent more unique users than the London Olympics four years prior. Drupal was proud to be a part of the largest digital sporting event in history. Looking forward to breaking more records in the years to come!