Viewership for the Paris Summer Olympics continues to add up well for NBC.
Monday’s “primetime” coverage of the Paris Summer Olympics averaged 31.3 million viewers across the full suite of NBC networks (per Nielsen fast-nationals and Adobe Analytics), a figure that encompasses live afternoon coverage from 2-5 PM ET and a primetime encore — up 70% from the equivalent day of the COVID-delayed Tokyo Olympics three years ago (18.4M). With a streaming audience of 4.5 million, the Nielsen-only audience would be in the neighborhood of 26.8 million.
As noted repeatedly, this year’s Olympics is being measured differently than any in past years. Because NBC is airing its usual primetime fare during the day, its “primetime” audience consists of all Olympic programming on the NBC family of networks during the 2-5 PM ET period, in addition to the actual primetime show. Thus, the primetime audience includes events like Monday’s mid-afternoon United States-Japan women’s basketball game on USA, which in past Olympics would not have counted toward the primetime show.
Speaking of, United States-Japan averaged 3.0 million across USA and Peacock — surpassing all of the men’s and women’s basketball games in the Tokyo Olympics, except for the gold medal games.
There has been considerable discussion about the decision to leave Caitlin Clark off of the women’s basketball team and the impact she would have had on the ratings. Team USA’s Olympic opener averaged fewer viewers than their matchup against Clark and the WNBA All-Stars in the recent WNBA All-Star Game (3.4M), but outdrew all other WNBA games this season. It also trailed seven Clark’s college games at Iowa this season, six in the NCAA women’s basketball tournament and the other being the Big Ten Tournament final.
Through Monday, NBC’s “primetime” Olympic coverage is averaging 33.8 million viewers, a figure that combines the afternoon and primetime windows, all of the NBC networks, and two measurement companies (Nielsen and Adobe Analytics) — up 77% from Tokyo in 2021 (19.1M). This is the first Olympics in which NBC is airing its primetime fare during the day, and as such the first in which it is combining daytime and primetime viewership. NBC previously issued a combined, multi-network, multi-platform figure in 2016 and 2021.
