The Olympic basketball finals were not immune from the downward trend for this year’s Games, but still held up well by the diminished standards of the current TV era.
Last Friday’s United States-France Olympic men’s basketball final averaged 9.2 million viewers on NBC, marking the seventh-largest basketball audience since the wave of cancellations and postponements that decimated the industry in March of last year. Figures do not include the streaming audience on NBC’s various digital platforms (Peacock simulcast NBC’s coverage).
The narrow U.S. win trails only the final two games of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament (Baylor-Gonzaga: 16.92M; Gonzaga-UCLA: 14.94M) and four games of this year’s NBA Finals.
Viewership declined 21% from the 2016 final between the U.S. and Serbia, which aired on a Sunday afternoon (11.7M), and 26% from the 2012 U.S.-Spain final, which aired on a Sunday morning (12.5M). This year marked the first time since 1996 that the Olympic men’s basketball final began during NBC’s primetime window. The full primetime window averaged 9.85 million on NBC alone (12.6 million across all platforms).
The last time the men’s gold medal game averaged fewer viewers was 2008, when the U.S. “Redeem Team” edged Spain in front of an NBC audience of 6.0 million. That figure is far more impressive than it looks given the game began at 2:30 AM ET.
The following night’s United States-Japan women’s final averaged 7.8 million, the largest audience for any women’s basketball game in at least five years. Figures for the 2016 gold medal game were unavailable. Viewership declined 24% from the 2012 gold medal game, which aired on a Saturday afternoon (10.2M), but increased 32% from the 2008 game, which aired on a Saturday morning (5.9M).
Like the men’s game, the women’s final began during NBC’s primetime window for the first time since 1996. The full primetime window averaged 8.45 million on NBC alone (10.5 million across all platforms).
No WNBA game has averaged even one million viewers since 2008, and the most-watched Women’s NCAA Tournament game on record — UConn-Oklahoma in 2002 — averaged 5.68 million.
Most-watched basketball games since 2019
[Nielsen estimates from NBC]
