MUMBAI: BBC's decision to provide interactive services in the UK for the Olympics has paid off.

As many as 8.96 million digital satellite viewers pressed the red button to use the BBC's interactive Olympic services. This represents the highest reaching service to date and more than double the previous peak for Wimbledon 2004.

While 83 per cent of those who had pressed the red button used the service for more than three minutes, 61 per cent were still interacting 15 minutes into the service, and 51 per cent stayed over 25 minutes.

Figures show that 58 per cent of the available digital satellite (Sky) audience pressed red to interact. The BBC's broadband Olympics service which included both live and highlights coverage attracted an estimated 2.8 million requests for at-home broadband streaming.

The site bbc.co.uk/olympics attracted 5.7 million unique users during the games. BBC Sport's head of New Media, Sports News and Development Andrew Thompson said, "This was the first ever truly interactive Olympics. It is a model for multi-media working at the BBC in the future.

"The interactive services give our audiences exactly what they wanted across the web and interactive TV: extra choice about what events they watch, when and how they watched them.

"The figures we got are a tribute to the production and technical teams who worked so effectively together across all media to deliver a fantastic choice of compelling content."

The BBC's interactive Olympics service gave digital satellite and cable viewers the opportunity to choose from four streams of live coverage through the red button in addition to BBC One and BBC Two.