In Australia, the Nine Network claims its free-to-air broadcasts on Nine and GEM across 17 days reached in excess of 13,573 million viewers, outperforming the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games by 920,598 and the 2004 Athens Olympic Games by 1,063,663.
This figure does not include the subscription-TV audience on eight channels of Foxtel, which surpassed another one million viewers on some nights.
And American broadcaster NBC claims its coverage was watched by more viewers than any other event in US television history, albeit with the advantage of 17 days' coverage and multiple channels broadcasting 5535 hours from the Games, as opposed to its 2000 hours of Beijing coverage.
Americans viewed the Games across NBCUniversal's networks of NBC, NBC Sports Network, MSNBC, CNBC, Telemundo and Bravo.
The total audience of 219.4 million surpassed the 1996 Atlanta Olympics' 209 million viewership and the 215 million who watched the 2008 Beijing Games.
The host nation also boasts of its coverage being the biggest national television event in the history of the modern ratings system (since 2002) with almost 52 million Brits - or 90 per cent of the total UK population - watching at least 15 minutes of the GameS on the BBC.
That beat the 2002 World Cup and the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.
The national public broadcaster had peak audiences of 27.3 million during the opening ceremony, 26.3 million during the closing ceremony (when Mr Bean upstaged the London Symphony Orchestra), 20 million for the men's 100m final and 17.1 million for local hero Mo Farah's win in the 10,000m.
Both the opening and closing ceremonies averaged 22 million viewers across three hours.
The success of the BBC's coverage - across 26 channels - also consigned commercial competitor ITV to its worst-ever daily and weekly ratings as even coverage on BBC3 surpassed ITV.
The same was not true in Australia where the Seven Network managed the best shares of any network other than the host broadcaster during an Olympic Games fortnight.
Nine claimed an average audience of 1.616 million viewers across the early evening and evening timeslots of London 2012.
The Foxtel simultaneous programming averaged 538,170 viewers, meaning the aggregate 5 City Metro television audience for London 2012 primetime was 2.133 million between 6.30pm-10.30pm.
Audience comparisons between Olympics are fraught due to the differing time zones of each Games. Obviously the 2000 Sydney and 2008 Beijing Games were far more palatable viewing prospects for Australians than the overnight viewing from London.
And the 2016 Rio de Janiero Olympic Games are going to provide even more challenging time difference for Australian broadcasters.
Similarly, technological and viewing changes mean the figures pulled from the days of single analog TV channels can't be compared to the breadth of London's 10 channels in Australia (or 24 in England) and online viewing opportunities.
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