At least one company benefited from Olympics fans in the United States who tried to circumvent NBC’s television coverage during the London Games.
AnchorFree, the Mountain View, Calif.-based startup released data to Reuters on Monday showing a major bump in users who installed a product that gives U.S. users an anonymous IP address in the United Kingdom.
Presumably the people who signed up for the product, called ExpatShield, used it to watch BBC’s online streams of the Olympics.
According to the data, the number of installs of the free software surged 1,153 percent in the United States during the games.
The company, which recorded an average of 220 installs a day before the Olympics, saw the number of installs increase to 2,753 installs during the 17-day event.
Its daily number of users also quadrupled to 8,121 compared to 2,040 average users before the Olympics. The peak day was on July 31 when 10,105 users logged in to catch the U.S. women take gold in the gymnastics team final while in swimming, South Africa’s Chad le Clos edged out Michael Phelps in the 200 meter butterfly.
READ ON: Data shows thousands circumvented NBC Olympics coverage
