Like the Paris Summer Olympics, viewership the Milan-Cortina Winter Games rebounded from the lows of the COVID era, thanks in part to compelling U.S. results and NBC’s new approach to its primetime windows.
NBC’s “primetime” coverage of the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics averaged 23.5 million viewers across all platforms during the live, afternoon “Milan Prime” window and “Primetime in Milan” encore presentation, per a combination of final Nielsen data and Adobe Analytics — up 96% from the combined primetime and live audience in Beijing four years ago (12.0M).
(In Beijing — the least-watched Olympics ever in primetime — live events typically aired in the primetime, late night and early morning windows. As might go without saying, live windows in the overnight hours would obviously not draw as well as this year’s mid-afternoon events.)
The majority of the audience watched the primetime encores, with “Primetime in Milan” averaging 13.8 million — 59% of the average audience. The primetime-only audience would still mark a 21% increase over Beijing in 2022 (11.4M), an increase that is likely beyond the range that could be explained by Nielsen methodological changes.
The live, afternoon “Milan Prime” airings averaged 9.7 million, or 41%.
The combined viewership figure includes a streaming audience of 3.3 million measured by Adobe Analytics. That would put the Nielsen-only combined average at 20.2 million. (NBC’s position is that because Nielsen does not track its streaming viewership, its combined Nielsen + Adobe audience figures are comparable to the Nielsen-only figures of other networks.)
The average also includes viewership across all NBC platforms, including the Versant-owned cable networks USA Network and CNBC. USA averaged 1.3 million total day viewers — including coverage that aired outside of the “Milan Prime” or “Primetime in Milan” windows — and 1.7 million in primetime.
NBC said Monday that this year’s Winter Olympics ranks as the most-watched since 2014, but any comparisons to prior Olympics are complicated by changes in how data is measured by Nielsen and reported by the network. To begin with, Nielsen did not begin including out-of-home viewing in its estimates until 2020 and did not do so in 100 percent of the lower 48 states until last February. Nielsen also shifted to a new methodology in September that adds “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes to its traditional panel.
In addition, Milan-Cortina was just the second Olympics in which NBC carried its marquee primetime events live in the afternoon hours, a strategy the network begin in the Paris Summer Olympics two years ago. The decision to carry those events live allows NBC to combine viewership across multiple dayparts and networks, meaning events that would never before have counted as airing in the network’s “primetime” window — including midday hockey games on cable — are now included in those figures.
It should be noted that the Olympic men’s hockey gold medal game is not among those included in the primetime figure, having taken place in an 8 AM ET morning window. That game averaged 18.6 million.
While NBC is comparing this year’s figures to similarly combined windows from past Olympics, it is not quite an apples-to-apples comparison — as the network’s programming strategy was necessarily different in past Olympics, depending on the time zones. In Beijing four years ago and PyeongChang in 2018, NBC was able to carry many of its marquee events live in primetime, obviously a preferable circumstance to this year’s afternoon showings. But outside of primetime, live coverage was confined to NBC’s late night window and to the overnight hours on cable, windows that would add little to the primetime total.
And in the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, which like this year featured most live competition during the afternoon hours, events like the women’s figure skating final aired live only on cable (NBCSN).
Milwaukee led all markets for Olympics coverage through Friday, averaging a 13.7 rating and 49 share. Minneapolis-St. Paul was a close second at a 13.5 with a higher share of 53. Fort Myers, FL (13.1/42), Pittsburgh (12.7/42) and Dayton, Ohio (11.6/48) rounded out the top five. Salt Lake City, a past and future Olympic host that for years topped the list of local markets, ranked 12th with a 10.0/54.
