With Simone Biles, Katie Ledecky, Sha’Carri Richardson, LeBron James, Stephen Curry and the USWNT all in action, Saturday was a particularly active day of Olympic viewing on the NBC networks.
Saturday’s “primetime” coverage of the Paris Summer Olympics averaged a combined 34.6 million viewers across the full suite of NBC platforms, per Nielsen fast-nationals and Adobe Analytics — a figure that encompasses a live afternoon window and primetime replay — up 111% from the equivalent night of the COVID-delayed Tokyo Olympics three years ago (16.4M). The Saturday figure is the second-highest of the Olympics thus far, behind last Sunday (41.5M) and last Tuesday (34.7M).
With a streaming audience of 4.4 million measured by Adobe Analytics, the Nielsen-only figure would come out to about 30.2 million.
Coverage the previous night averaged a combined 27.4 million, up 58% from ’21 (17.3M).
NBC’s “primetime” window is averaging 32.6 million viewers through Saturday (+77%). As has been noted, NBC is airing its usual primetime fare live in the afternoon — a shift from the previous practice of waiting until the primetime window to carry the events either live or on tape delay. As a result, the “primetime” window consists of both the usual 8 PM ET show and a live afternoon window from 2-5 PM ET.
With the “primetime” slate not beginning until 2 PM ET, there were a number of live events not included in the viewership figure — including Saturday’s gymnastics vault competition in which Simone Biles and Jade Carey finished first and third respectively. (The primetime re-air of the vault competition is of course included in the viewership.) Figures for the live vault competition were not immediately available.
Also not included in Saturday’s “primetime” figure is the United States-Puerto Rico men’s basketball game, which averaged a combined 9.4 million on NBC in a late morning window and another 3.5 million in an evening re-air on USA Network.
The same goes for the United States-Japan women’s soccer quarterfinal, which drew 3.0 million on USA and Peacock in a mid-morning window.
