NBC Reports Archery is No. 1 Most Watched 2012 Olympic Sport

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If you were to hazard a guess what has been the most popular sport–from a TV audience standpoint–so far at the Olympics, what would be your guess? Swimming? Gymnastics? Beach Volleyball? Dressage (just what the hell is dressage, anyway)?

Nope, try archery. Yep, archery. How cool is that?

From this story in the New York Times:
The London Olympics have generated plenty of news so far, but how about this headline: Archery is the No. 1 sport so far on NBC’s cable coverage of the games. That’s right, archery has become a hot Olympic sport. In a telephone news conference from London Thursday, Alan Wurtzel, NBC’s top research executive, said, “The numbers for archery have been nothing less than huge.” And by huge he means it has averaged 1.5 million viewers — in the daytime hours — higher than any other sport NBC has covered on its cable channels, including basketball. (To be fair, if only the games of the United States teams are measured, basketball would beat the bow-and-arrow experts.)

According to the story, one possible reason for the upsurge in archery interest is (what else?) the monster popularity of The Hunger Games. Makes sense to me. What do you think? Is a young adult novel the best thing to ever happen to archery? Will it do for bowhunting and archery what Harry Potter did for reading?

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