Newsdesk played the leading role in our ability to quickly find and understand the news coverage for each of these sponsors. It is clear from our data that Visa (Gold), McDonald’s (Silver), and Coca-Cola (Bronze) were the winners in terms of highest volume of news mentions.

The coverage was not always positive. Each day there was backlash against the International Olympic Committee for allowing the sponsors to dictate the food, payment methods, and even logos that appeared on clothing worn by spectators and athletes at the Olympic Games.

It wasn’t all negative, though. Visa’s series of real-time congratulatory commercials for medalists were quite popular. Also, several athletes had their victory celebrations at McDonald’s after winning their medals, which was widely covered.

The primary goal of this blog series was to quickly find and report relevant data . To this end Newsdesk performed very well.

We built searches beforehand for each top sponsor and included variations on their brand names (e.g. Coca-Cola and Coke). The search results automatically fed into dynamic charts, which helped us visualize the leaders for the previous day. Creating these searches took a little time and thought up-front, but after that it was “set it and forget it”.

Each day we used our charts to identify the day’s leaders. Then we scanned the headlines to see which topics were driving coverage. This took us just a minute or two. From there, it was simple to see trends and find single articles that typified them.

We wrote the blog posts and were done. All-in-all, it was a very quick process and easily repeatable every day.

This is something you could do for your own blog. Tell us in the comments if you would like someone to show you how.

Here are some up close and personal photos of the Olympics in action. Thanks to everyone  from Moreover Technologies who contributed pictures!

Yesterday it was announced that visitors at the London Games have spent almost $700 million using their Visa cards in the first week:

Spending categories that experienced the greatest activity include “Services” (US$133.7 million) – including items such as shoe and jewelry repair and spas; “Entertainment” (US$95.5 million) – including theater tickets and other attractions; “Airlines” (US$82.9 million); “Other Retailers” (US$71.8 million) – including bike shops, book stores, antique shops, and drug stores and more; and “Hotels” (US$69.3 million).

Top Ten Contributors to Spend on Visa Accounts by Country/Territory During Week One of the Games (Throughout the United Kingdom)

Ranking	Country/Territory	Total Spend (USD)	% of Total
1	United States	$85.5 million	12%
2	Japan	$50.9 million	7%
3	France	$41.5 million	6%
4	Italy	$39.5 million	6%
5	Australia	$35.3 million	5%
6	Republic of Ireland	$32.4 million	5%
7	Spain	$31.1 million	4%
8	Germany	$30.9 million	4%
9	Canada	$24.1 million	3%
10	Sweden	$23.4 million	3%

The top 10 contributing countries accounted for 57 per cent of the total amount spent on Visa accounts in the United Kingdom during this time period.

This story has been widely distributed. Combined with another successful real-time congratulatory commercial, this lead to Visa having the largest news coverage of the Top Olympic sponsors.

The Medalists for yesterday are:

• Gold: Visa
• Silver: Coke
• Bronze: McDonald’s

Will Visa, Coke, and McDonald’s continue to dominate the news coverage, or will another sponsor take the spotlight week 2? Check back Monday !

The British Broadcasting Corporation(BBC) has some of the best Olympic coverage in the world and Moreover Technologies, Newsdesk and Search Engine Toolkit, help provide value to the BBC visitors.

There are 3 levels of Olympic coverage offered through the BBC website:

Countries

Every country has their own news page, listing key facts, records, medal counts, and more. The “Around the Web” news is powered by Moreover and is a part of every country’s page.

Great Britain’s page:

Sports

Just like countries, each sport being showcased in the Olympics has its own dedicated page. Moreover’s tools allow the “Around the Web” section to be populated with relevant news with minimal manual intervention.

A portion of the  swimming page:

Individuals

Top individual Olympians also have their own pages supported by Moreover’s news. Hundreds of pages at www.BBC.co.uk showcase how information can be automatically displayed using a robust taxonomy to create value for visitors.

“Around the Web” section for Tony Martin:

 What has been your go-to source for Olympics coverage? 

Visa is hoping that there is no such thing as bad publicity after a system malfunction left spectators unable to pay with their Visa cards at Wembley Stadium. Unfortunately, as a condition of their sponsorship, Visa is the only accepted credit card at the 2012 Olympics, leading to long lines for concessions and disgruntled visitors.

This mishap was the main feature on dozens of sites and gained a passing mention in many more.

On the positive side of things, Visa did get good coverage with their real-time congratulatory commercial for Emilie Heyman:

[Visa] introduced a new congratulatory commercial celebrating Emilie Heyman’s bronze medal performance in women’s synchronized 3-metre springboard at the London 2012 Olympic Games. The spot, entitled “Congratulations Emilie,” aired on Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium and features an image of Emilie on the podium in London.

Visa had more coverage than Coke and GE combined.

Our medalists for most news coverage on the 30th of July are:

• Gold: Visa
• Silver: Coke
  
• Bronze: GE

After taking Bronze over the weekend, Samsung did not place in the top 3 today and GE won their first medal.

What is your opinion about Visa’s sponsorship? Even with the troubles at Wembley, was it still a good move to have a monopoly on payments at the games? Tell us in the comments!