With the United States women delivering a strong night at the rink, NBC saw one of its stronger audiences of the Olympic Games.
Thursday’s “primetime” coverage of the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics averaged a combined 26.7 million viewers on the NBC family of networks across a live daytime airing and primetime replay, per a combination of Nielsen preliminary data and Adobe Analytics — the third-largest audience of the Games, behind last Sunday (27.8M) and Super Bowl Sunday coverage that the network says grossed 42 million.
NBC said that Thursday’s coverage delivered the largest weekday Winter Olympics audience since 2014, but comparisons to past years come with a laundry list of caveats — from changes in Nielsen methodology to how NBC is reporting the numbers. Milan-Cortina is only the fourth Olympics since Nielsen began tracking out-of-home viewing in its estimates, the second since NBC began combining its live and encore audiences, and the first since Nielsen shifted to “Big Data + Panel” as its currency.
It was not immediately known how many viewers watched the live “Milan Prime” window from 2-5 PM ET and how many watched during the “Primetime in Milan” replay. The live window featured American Alysa Liu winning gold in the women’s figure skating competition on NBC and the United States’ women’s hockey team simultaneously defeating Canada in the women’s hockey final on USA Network.
The hockey game averaged 5.3 million on USA, per Nielsen preliminary estimates and Adobe Analytics, which NBC says is the largest women’s hockey audience on record. That is up from 3.5 million for the same matchup four years ago, which aired on NBC but in a late night window.
A specific number for the figure skating competition was not immediately available. (With the “primetime” NBC audience now including events across multiple dayparts and networks — including the hockey game, which would not have counted toward the primetime audience in most prior Olympics — the figure skating audience on NBC is only one part of the overall viewership number, rather than the entirety as in past years.) Nonetheless, it is hard to imagine that the figure skating competition by itself did not at least approach 20 million between the live competition and primetime replay.
The Olympic women’s figure skating final was for years the highest-profile event of the Winter Olympics, particularly in years when Americans were in contention. The last time prior to Thursday that an American won the competition was in 2002, when Sarah Hughes’ victory at a U.S.-based Olympics in Salt Lake City averaged 43.31 million viewers on NBC.
Viewership was of course sky high for the 1994 Lillehammer competition, which was won by Ukraine’s Oksana Baiul, but overshadowed by Americans Tonya Harding and (through no fault of her own) Nancy Kerrigan. CBS audiences that year approached 80 million, and had out-of-home viewing been tracked then, would surely have risen even higher.
But in the two Olympics prior to this year, the figure skating competition sank in line with the Games overall — falling well below the 20 million mark.
In other action, Wednesday’s United States-Sweden men’s hockey quarterfinal averaged 6.9 million on NBC (per Nielsen preliminary data and Adobe Analytics) — which would rank as the highest for any Olympic hockey game, regardless of gender, since the 2010 Canada-United States men’s final.
Across the live, afternoon “Milan Prime” windows and the “Primetime in Milan” replay, the Winter Olympics was averaging a combined 24.1 million viewers across NBC’s various platforms (including Versant-owned USA Network and CNBC), per a combination of Nielsen (including preliminary data) and Adobe — up 93% from four years ago in Beijing, a COVID-impacted Olympics that ranks as the least-watched ever in primetime.
NBC is comparing this year’s numbers to a similar combination of live and primetime coverage in Beijing four years ago, but keep in mind that in Beijing, live events typically aired in the primetime, late night and early morning windows. Any live windows in the overnight hours would obviously not draw as well as ones that aired during the afternoon.
