Like the Games as a whole, the Olympic women’s figure skating final is no longer the kind of ratings draw it used to be.
Primetime coverage of the Beijing Winter Olympics featuring the women’s figure skating final averaged 8.52 million viewers on NBC Thursday night, down 44% from the equivalent night in PyeongChang four years ago (15.2M). Including concurrent coverage on USA Network (1.02M) and CNBC (400K), primetime coverage averaged 9.94 million. An across-all-platforms figure including additional streaming viewership was not available.
As is no surprise given the overall trend in this Olympics, Thursday’s audience marked a new low for what was once one of the marquee events in all of sports — the Olympic women’s figure skating final. Even outside of the infamous Lillehammer Olympics in 1994 — when the Nancy Kerrigan-Tonya Harding controversy twice drove ratings past the 40 mark — the women’s final attracted audiences of 43.3 million in 2002 (a U.S.-based Olympics in which an American won), 25.7 million in 2006, 22.9 million in 2010 and 20.3 million in 2014.
In other action, Wednesday’s late night Canada-United States women’s hockey final averaged 3.54 million viewers on NBC (including additional streaming data not tracked by Nielsen) — down from 3.7 million four years ago, when coverage primarily aired on NBCSN (NBC simulcast the overtime) and down sharply from 2014, when coverage aired solely on NBC in an afternoon timeslot (4.9M).
Canada’s win ranks second among hockey games in the U.S. since Game 7 of the 2019 Stanley Cup Final, trailing only last year’s Canadiens-Lightning Stanley Cup Final Game 5 (3.62M).
U.S.-Canada matchups were the three most-watched games of the hockey tournament. A men’s game between the rivals averaged 1.22 million on USA Network February 11 and a women’s game four nights earlier averaged 1.17 million.
[Nielsen estimates from ShowBuzz Daily 2.18, NBC Sports PR]
