More than halfway through the delayed Tokyo Summer Olympics, viewership continues to register historic lows.
Monday’s primetime coverage of the Tokyo Summer Olympics averaged 15.8 million viewers across NBC’s various platforms, down 38% from the comparable night of the Rio Summer Games in 2016 (24.3M). Versus the comparable night of the most recent Olympics, the Pyeongchang Winter Games in 2018, viewership fell 15% from 18.6 million.
The 38 percent drop is actually on the modest side in this Olympics, snapping a streak of seven straight nights in which viewership fell by more than 40 percent.
Sunday’s primetime coverage fell 43% from Rio to 16.0 million, with Saturday’s coverage down 44% to 14.9 million and Friday’s down 40% to 15.5 million.
The Saturday audience ranks as the smallest on record for any night of competition at a Summer Olympics, falling below the previous mark of 15.0 million set last Wednesday. The Tokyo Olympics now accounts for eight of the nine smallest primetime Summer Olympics audiences this century.
It should be noted that these historically low numbers include viewership across all NBC platforms, including cable and streaming. USA Network averaged 2.0 million for primetime coverage on Saturday and Sunday, the two most-watched primetime Summer Olympics telecasts ever on cable (with the obvious caveat that the sample size is extremely small).
NBC alone is putting up numbers that would have once been unthinkable for the Olympics, including a 5.8 rating and 10.9 million on Saturday night (a figure that does not include the early portion of NBC’s primetime coverage, which was listed as a separate program at a 4.1 and 7.48 million). The declines have been sharper on NBC than across all platforms — Saturday’s primetime window fell 57 percent — no real surprise given the ramp up in concurrent primetime coverage on cable.
The Olympics continues to outperform other sporting events, with Sunday’s primetime window more-than-doubling the competing United States-Mexico Gold Cup final on Univision and FS1 (7.6M). Of course, it is not exactly saying much that the Summer Olympics could only double the final of a non-World Cup soccer tournament.
It also continues to outperform the rest of television. NBC averaged 13.44 million viewers in primetime last week, per the Los Angeles Times, down 52% from the same point in 2016 but the highest average of any television network since CBS averaged 18.09 million Super Bowl week.
Smallest primetime Summer Olympics audiences this century
[Nielsen estimates from NBC Sports, NBC Sports PR/Twitter 8.3 a, b, Los Angeles Times 8.3]
