The Summer Olympics surged to nearly twenty million viewers Sunday night, more than ten million short of the comparable night in Rio.
NBC said Monday that it averaged 19.2 million viewers for Sunday’s second night of competition at the Tokyo Summer Olympics (19.8 million including a streaming audience of 636,000 on NBC’s digital platforms), comfortably ahead of the previous two nights.
Exact figures were not available. It was not clear whether Sunday’s primetime numbers included concurrent coverage on NBC’s cable networks.
Though up substantially over the previous nights — NBC and its cable networks averaged 15.3 million on Saturday, while the primetime telecast of Friday’s Opening Ceremony averaged 12.3 million, per The Hollywood Reporter — Sunday’s telecast was no match for previous Olympics.
The opening Sunday of the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics averaged 12 million more viewers across NBC’s various platforms (31.8M), while the first Sunday of the 2012 London Games averaged 16 million more on NBC alone (36.0M).
The opening Sunday of the most recent Olympics — the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games — was also considerably stronger at 26.0 million across NBC’s various platforms.
No Olympics this century has averaged fewer viewers on the opening Sunday, with even low-rated Games like Turin in 2006 (23.2M) and Sydney in 2000 (23.9M) well ahead of this year’s telecast.
A more favorable comparison is to the rest of television. Beyond ranking as the most-watched television program since the Super Bowl, Sunday’s telecast delivered TV’s top sports audience since the 2019 World Series.
[Nielsen estimates from NBC]
