The weather and the time difference are turning the London 2012 Olympics into the doona games as Sydneysiders snuggle up in front of the TV or computer, and shun live venues offering Olympic viewing.

At Customs House at Circular Quay, the one public viewing site in Sydney, the crowds have been thin. Only one person stopped long enough early on Tuesday morning to watch Australian swimmers Stephanie Rice and Alicia Coutts compete.

''Who's going to get out of bed to watch a two-minute swimming race?'' asked Tim Dowman, the licensee of Cheers Sports Bar and Grill, which has screened every Olympics since it opened in 1983. ''There's no real drawcard.'' He noted a lack of patrons watching the Olympic feeds coming from seven different sports channels.

''The Olympics doesn't galvanise people in the same way that the World Cup does. We need Australia to get in the finals of a large team event, like soccer, to get people out.''

This lack of public enthusiasm is reflected in a survey by McCrindle Research, where 90 per cent thought we weren't ''at our best'' this Olympics. When asked why Australia may be performing worse than in the past, about 34 per cent said it was just the cycle of things while 35 per cent said other nations were more committed.

During the Athens Olympics in 2004, there were four live viewing sites in Sydney. By 2008, during the Beijing Olympics, there was just one.

Attempts to get big name sponsors to back a live site also failed. Sharp declined an offer to sponsor Customs House because it didn't fit its communication strategy. Sharp Corporation Australia's national marketing manager Mark Beard said the time difference made it less attractive, too.

If it had been in the same time zone, like the Japanese and Korean world cups, that would've been another matter, he said.

The Crowd Went Mild: Sydney Snubs Live Games Sites