A pair of winning combinations — Stephen Curry, LeBron James and Kevin Durant for Team USA, and Nielsen, Adobe, daytime, primetime and more than seven different networks for NBC — delivered in the ratings Thursday.
Thursday’s United States-Serbia Olympic men’s basketball semifinal averaged a combined 7.9 million viewers across NBC’s various platforms, including 13.5 million for the second half, per Nielsen and Adobe Analytics. The full game aired on USA Network and Peacock, with the second half also simulcast on the NBC broadcast network.
The United States’ comeback win delivered the third-largest basketball audience of the Olympics thus far, trailing a pair of weekend morning windows on NBC during the group stage — USA-Serbia on the opening Sunday (10.9M) and USA-Puerto Rico on the middle Saturday (9.4M).
The basketball game counts toward NBC’s “primetime” average for Thursday, which was 28.5 million across a live afternoon airing and primetime replay — up 97% from the equivalent day of the COVID-delayed Tokyo Olympics three years ago (14.5M).
Because NBC is airing its usual primetime fare during the day, it is presenting a combined figure comprised of a live afternoon segment (2-5 PM ET) and traditional primetime window (8-11 PM). As the network is counting viewership across all of its platforms airing events during those windows, its primetime audience now includes events like basketball that would not typically count toward the primetime figure.
NBC did not disclose viewership for Wednesday’s primetime coverage upon repeated request. Based on the network’s reported Olympic-to-date averages, SMW estimates that the Wednesday figure was in the neighborhood of 26 million, the lowest of the Games thus far.
NBC’s “primetime” coverage of the Paris Summer Olympics is now averaging 31.6 million viewers combined across afternoon and primetime, Nielsen and Adobe Analytics, and all of the NBC networks — up 77% from Tokyo in 2021 (17.8M).
