Paris Olympics TV ratings are up 79% over Tokyo Games, NBC says : NPR

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If you’re finding yourself drawn into watching the Paris Summer Olympics, you’re far from alone: An average of 34.5 million viewers tuned in over the first three days, according to preliminary TV and streaming numbers shared by NBC.

The showing, driven by cable platforms and the Peacock app, reflects a 79% viewership rise from the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics that took place in 2021, when 19.3 million people were counted by the same metric, according to the network.

The ratings for the 2024 Games were compiled by Nielsen and Adobe Analytics, combining live and same-day viewership of events using national figures and digital data.

While Simone Biles and gymnastics continue to be a strong draw along with showdowns in the Olympic swimming pool, popular team sports are also surpassing recent ratings marks.

The first Olympic game for the U.S. men’s basketball team on Sunday, a victory over Serbia, averaged 10.9 million viewers — “a larger audience than for its victory in the Tokyo Olympics gold-medal game (9.3 million),” according to NBC.

And in soccer on Sunday, the U.S. women’s national team posted a thrilling 4-1 win over Germany that drew an average of 4.2 million viewers. The figure tops the ratings for any men’s and women’s soccer match from the past two Summer Games, in Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro, NBC said.

Some of the ratings growth between Tokyo and Paris could be explained by the more U.S.-friendly time zone difference (Paris is 6 hours ahead of Eastern time, while Tokyo is 13 hours ahead). And unlike those games, athletes are able to go without masks — and compete in front of crowds of excited people. 

Then there’s the maturing and widening acceptance of NBC’s Peacock app, which was only a year old when the Tokyo Olympics began. The network is continuing to use streaming to make more of the Olympics — a firehose of daily sports events like no other — available to viewers.

“Led by Peacock, 4.5 billion minutes of Paris Olympics coverage has been streamed through Sunday — surpassing the entire Tokyo Olympics (4.48 billion minutes across NBCUniversal digital platforms),” NBC said. 

The figures are a dramatic rebound from the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, which had historically low TV ratings, and the Tokyo Summer Olympics, which saw growth in streaming but also had the lowest average primetime viewership ever for NBC’s Olympic programming.

NBC is broadcasting the Paris Olympics on its TV properties such as the USA Network, CNBC, and E!, along with online platforms such as NBCOlympics.com and the NBC/NBC Sports apps, in addition to Peacock.