Last week I wrote on how much buzz the Royal Wedding was causing online globally and the different ways people were trying to benefit from the major event.  This week I want to discuss the Royal Wedding coverage and the reach it had around the world.

• Over 22.8 million people in the United States watched the Royal Wedding on the 11 networks that covered the event (around 18 million households from Nielsen Media Research).
• BBC reported around 24.5 million viewers (British Population around 62 million) on its several channels and ITV which represented about 99% of British television views. This total is actually less than the estimated 28.1 million who watched Princess Diana marry Prince Charles in 1981 (14.2 million households watched in the U.S.).
• The 1.6 million simultaneous streams Akamai reported serving Friday morning were just enough to edge out the numbers from last year’s World Cup.
• The Hollywood Reporter claimed, “Yahoo! said Friday that its live video stream of the wedding set an all-time record for traffic, beating the previous record viewing for the Michael Jackson funeral by 21%.”
• YouTube boasted around 1.3 million live viewers (18.5 million as of Sunday) on the Royal Wedding Channel, but saw slower load times and at one point had only 74% availability on the Royal Channel.
• BBC’s website had serious problems with load times and the live video feed crashed.

• According to Webtrends’ infographic on Royal Wedding buzz (conversation on blogs, social networks, social media) published right before the wedding, twitter controlled 71% of the conversation with Facebook only having around 17%.
• The most ridiculous statistic of all is that the U.S. had 45% more buzz than in the U.K. (U.S. 65%, UK 20%).
• Webtrends also published that the Queen was mentioned in 35% of the Royal Wedding online conversation, beating out Prince Harry’s 20.5% and Kate’s sister Pippa who had 14.7%.

What does all of this mean?  Well first of all the wedding was enormously popular and viewed via some form of technology by billions of people worldwide.  It controlled most of the online conversation until Sunday night’s Osama Bin Laden story.  The statistics also show that despite the early start time in the U.S., people were tuning in everywhere (and may have cared a little too much about the wedding).  The conversations will be slowing down for a Royal Couple who will be living quietly and humbly in New Zealand for the next few years.