Another night, another steep decline and historic low for the Summer Olympics.
Wednesday’s primetime coverage of the Tokyo Summer Olympics averaged a combined 14.6 million viewers across NBC’s various television and digital platforms, down 34% from the comparable night of the 2016 Rio Games (22.1M) and the least-watched night of competition at any Summer Olympics since at least 1992. The previous low was 14.9 million on Saturday.
Tokyo now accounts for nine of the ten smallest primetime Summer Olympics audiences this century.
Versus the comparable night of the most recent Olympics, the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games, viewership declined 11% from 16.4 million. Every night of the Tokyo Olympics has averaged fewer viewers than the comparable night in Pyeongchang, no small feat given the Summer Olympics is typically a stronger draw than its Winter counterpart. Even the relatively low-rated Athens Summer Olympics in 2004 occasionally outdrew the comparable night of the previous Winter Games, the U.S.-based 2002 Salt Lake City edition.
As a reminder, NBC’s numbers include viewership across the flagship broadcast network, cable and streaming. USA Network contributed 2.1 million to the combined average, the largest primetime Summer Olympics audience ever on cable. Keep in mind NBC’s cable platforms did not begin carrying primetime coverage until 2016.
Wednesday marked the third-straight night that Olympic viewership declined less than 40 percent from 2016, which qualifies as an improvement given viewership had been regularly declining well over 40 percent in the first week.
[Nielsen estimates from NBC]
