Ratings predictions: Olympic basketball finals and more

The story of the Tokyo Olympics, at least on the media side, has been the historically low viewership. Every night of the Games has declined at least 30 percent from Rio five years ago, and most nights have fallen by 40 percent or more. This year’s Games has generated the six smallest primetime Summer Olympics audiences since at least 1992, and that is with the traditionally low-rated final weekend of competition still to come.

There are several reasons for the downturn in viewership, not the least of which being a one-year delay. Add to that the tiresome spectacle of empty venues, which viewers are undoubtedly sick of after the past year, and the absence of perennial stars Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt. Simone Biles, the biggest returning star from 2016, made most of her headlines in this Olympics for being unable to compete. [For more discussion of Olympic ratings and the Biles situation, listen to the recent Sports Media Watch podcast.]

Even without those factors, Tokyo was always going to be a lower-rated Olympics. While NBC was able to air many swimming and track and field events live in primetime, the time difference meant lengthy tape delays for gymnastics (news of Biles’ exit from the team final broke more than 10 hours before NBC’s primetime show) and afternoons bereft of live action (not the best way to build momentum leading into primetime).

As with all traditional media programming, the changing media landscape is also a major factor. People are simply watching less traditional television, and even though all Olympic events are available to stream, television is still the primary way viewers consume the Games (not a single night of the Olympics has averaged 1 million viewers on NBC’s streaming platforms).

The final marquee events of this Olympics are the men’s and women’s basketball finals, which air during NBC’s primetime window for the first time since 1996. It is unlikely that the basketball games will give NBC much of a boost relative to 2016, the gap is simply too great. It is hard to gauge how popular the basketball teams have been this year, given the first five U.S. men’s games aired exclusively via livestream (either on Peacock, NBCOlympics.com or the NBC Sports app).

Back in 2016, the U.S. men’s defeat of Serbia in the gold medal game averaged 11.7 million viewers on a Sunday afternoon. That was down from 12.5 million in 2012, but up from 6.0 million for the “Redeem Team” in 2008 (a much more impressive figure than it looks, given the middle-of-the-night timeslot). Since sports went dark in March of last year, only four basketball games total have topped the ten million mark — the Baylor-Gonzaga NCAA men’s basketball final (16.9M), Gonzaga-UCLA in the Final Four (14.9M), Game 6 of the NBA Finals (12.5M) and Game 4 (10.25M). Friday’s final should be the fifth, if on the lower end of that range. Prediction: 10.63M.

Women’s basketball simply does not get primetime network television exposure. No WNBA or Women’s NCAA Tournament game has ever aired on primetime broadcast TV, and as mentioned before, no women’s basketball Olympic game has since 1996. On what will probably be the least-watched night of any Olympics on record, do not expect a particularly big audience — and viewership seems likely to drop from the 10.2 million the women’s gold medal game drew in 2012 (2016 figures were not available). Still, the numbers should represent as strong a sampling for women’s basketball as there has been in some time. Prediction: 8.64M.

The biggest suspense left in this Olympics is whether the all-time primetime viewership low will come Friday, Saturday or Sunday. Saturday seems likeliest, but do not be surprised if Sunday’s Closing Ceremony ends up with the distinction. The Closing Ceremony will have been done for more than ten hours by the time NBC takes the air Sunday night, and the Opening Ceremony numbers (just 12 million in primetime) indicate that there is little appetite for hours-delayed pageantry in front of empty stands. The Rio Closing Ceremony averaged 17.0 million viewers. Prediction: 9.43M.

Sunday Night Baseball is scheduled to make its ABC debut this weekend, just the latest foray of Major League Baseball onto its long-ago home. This is a low-stakes experiment that probably would not be taking place if not for the Olympics, and it is hard to imagine that either ESPN or MLB have any expectations that this will do well. As it is, it should at least top the two previous Sunday night games opposite the Olympics, neither of which cracked the million viewer mark on ESPN. Sunday night on broadcast television usually means stronger-than-usual ratings, August opposite the Olympics is a different story. Prediction: 1.40M.

NASCAR returns from a two-week Olympic hiatus with its first race at Watkins Glen since 2019. The Glen averaged 2.72 million viewers the last time it was held, the lowest for the race since at least 2001 (excluding rainouts). To match or surpass that number, NASCAR would need its largest NBCSN audience since last year at Texas (2.73M). Prediction: 2.53M.