A U.S. win in women’s gymnastics helped the Summer Olympics out of all-time low territory Thursday night, though the declines from 2016 were still sizable.
NBC said Friday that Thursday’s primetime coverage of the Tokyo Summer Olympics averaged a 10.8 rating and 19.5 million viewers across all of its platforms, down 43% in ratings and 41% in viewership from the comparable night of the Rio Games in 2016 (18.9, 33.0M). Versus the most recent Olympics, the Pyeongchang Winter Games three years ago, ratings fell 5% and viewership 1% from an 11.4 and 19.3 million.
Thursday’s primetime window, which included taped coverage of U.S. gymnast Sunisa Lee winning the gold medal in the women’s all-around, delivered the second-largest audience of the Games. Sunday’s primetime coverage averaged 20.0 million. The 10.8 rating is the highest of the Games.
Viewership improved substantially from Tuesday’s primetime window (16.2M), which featured the women’s gymnastics team final — an event that made national headlines in the hours before NBC’s broadcast due to the early exit of Simone Biles. It also rebounded from Wednesday’s audience of 15.0 million, the second-smallest primetime Olympics audience on record.
So far, all seven nights of the Olympics have averaged 20 million or fewer viewers — nearly doubling the combined total of the previous three Summer Olympics in 2008, 2012 and 2016 (four).
The Olympics is now averaging 17.5 million viewers in primetime, still down more than 11 million viewers from the NBC-only average at the same point in 2016 (28.7M). If well-below previous Olympics, the seven-day average now exceeds that of NBC’s Sunday Night Football last season, which averaged 17.4 million across NBC’s various platforms.
[Nielsen estimates from NBC]
