For the second time in less than a year, the Olympic Games averaged a record-low primetime audience on the NBC family of networks.
Primetime coverage of the Beijing Winter Olympics averaged 10.7 million viewers across NBC’s television platforms and 11.4 million including additional streaming viewership not tracked by Nielsen — easily the smallest average on record for primetime coverage of any Games, Summer or Winter. The previous low was set by last year’s Tokyo Summer Olympics, which averaged 15.6 million pending revision (Nielsen has admitted undercounting last year’s audiences).
Including PyeongChang in 2018 (19.8M), the past three Olympics rank as the three least-watched in primetime since the beginning of the Nielsen “People Meter” era in 1988.
Beijing declined 42% from PyeongChang (19.8M) and 46% from the Sochi Games in 2014 (21.3M). Viewership has now declined for three-straight Winter Olympics, a streak that extends to five-straight Games overall if one includes the declines for the Rio and Tokyo Summer Olympics.
One would have to go back a full decade to find the last Olympics that posted a viewership gain, London in 2012. That London Olympics, the most-watched Summer Games since 1996 and the most-watched overall since 2002, capped a streak of three-straight Olympics — and five of six — in which NBC posted gains.
It seems increasingly apparent that London was the end of a particular era of the Olympics. That was a Games hosted by a stalwart U.S. ally in which American stars (and American-adjacent stars like Usain Bolt) succeeded without particular difficulty or controversy. The decade since has seen the Games hosted by highly controversial nations Russia and China; the USA gymnastics scandal; Russia’s suspected performance-enhancing drug use and its murky so-called exclusion from competition; the retirements of Bolt and Michael Phelps; and displays of human frailty and vulnerability — from Simone Biles’ exit last year to Mikaela Shiffrin’s uncharacteristic performances this year — that are gaining in societal acceptance but clash with the image of physical triumph over all that NBC and the IOC have been selling for decades. By current standards, London was strikingly uncomplicated.
It is also the case that the media industry is a far different place now than in 2012, the first year NBC made all Olympic events available to stream live. The fracturing of the mass audience is an issue affecting all properties outside of the NFL and NBC’s attempts to accommodate viewers’ needs with live streams and concurrent cable coverage simply are not enough to overcome changing viewer habits.
After two Olympics in six months, the Games are on hiatus until 2024 when Paris is scheduled to host the Summer Games. Given the low bar set by the past two Olympics, NBC could well score gains for Paris 2024 and Milan 2026 before heading into what should be the biggest Olympics of the decade, Los Angeles in 2028. That of course assumes everything goes as planned.
Additional Olympics ratings, including individual figures for the final nights of competition and Closing Ceremony, will be posted Wednesday when the ratings are available.
Least-watched Olympics in primetime, People Meter era
* Revised figures for last year’s Olympics were not immediately available; the listed average of 15.6 million includes an undercount of out-of-home viewing.
** The current average for this year’s Olympics is based on preliminary viewing for the final weekend of the Games.
[Nielsen estimates from NBC Sports]
