Apples-to-apples comparisons to past Olympics are elusive, but the first day of competition at the Paris Summer Olympics nonetheless delivered for NBC.
Saturday’s “primetime” coverage of the Paris Summer Olympics averaged a combined 32.4 million viewers across the NBC family of networks (per Nielsen fast-nationals and Adobe Analytics), up 83% from the opening Saturday of the COVID-delayed Tokyo Summer Olympics three years ago (17.7M).
With NBC airing its usual primetime fare live in the afternoon hours, the network’s “primetime” coverage consisted of a live 2-5 PM ET window and a separate primetime presentation. NBC did not disclose how many viewers watched live versus primetime.
The viewership figure includes all of the NBCUniversal platforms — including Peacock, USA Network, CNBC, E! and the “Paris Extra” channels. The Adobe Analytics-measured streaming audience was 4.7 million viewers, meaning that the Nielsen-only figure was in the neighborhood of 27.7 million.
Given the sharp differences from past years — the live afternoon coverage, the combined across-all-networks figure and the addition of streaming — any apples-to-apples comparison to earlier Olympics is complicated at best. Also complicating those comparisons is the addition of Nielsen out-of-home viewing, which was not factored into the company’s viewership estimates until 2020.
The Saturday audience was an improvement over Friday’s Opening Ceremony, which averaged 28.6 million across the live and primetime telecasts (again, per Nielsen fast-nationals and Adobe Analytics).
