Sunday saw the second biggest U.S. audience of the Paris Olympics so far with more than 35M viewers tuning in across NBC, Peacock and other platforms.
That’s more than double the comparable Sunday audience for the Tokyo Games (17.4M cross-platform viewers), headlined by medal-worthy performances from Noah Lyles, Suni Lee, and Bobby Finke.
Sunday’s coverage was streamed by 4.5M viewers on Peacock and NBCU digital platforms alone, according to the company.
This year’s Olympics couldn’t be going any better for NBCU, as the Summer Games have been raking in huge audiences daily. Beginning with the opening ceremony, the 10-day total audience delivery is around 33M viewers across the combined live Paris Prime (2-5 p.m. ET) and U.S. primetime (8-11 p.m. ET/PT) time periods. That’s an 80% uptick from Tokyo.
Saturday’s audience was only down slightly from Sunday, with 34.6M cross-platform viewers tuning in for Simone Biles and Jade Carey’s vault medals, Katie Ledecky’s 800m freestyle, Ryan Crouser’s gold medal in the shot put for the third consecutive Summer Olympics, and Sha’Carri Richardson and Melissa Jefferson’s medals in the women’s 100m.
Once again, Saturday’s coverage was double that of the Tokyo Games, with 4.4M viewers on streaming alone.
NBCU specifically pointed to the U.S. Men’s basketball team’s victory over Puerto Rico, which averaged 9.4M viewers across NBC and Peacock despite being outside of the “Paris Prime” window. The encore presentation of the game on USA Network and Peacock netted another 3.5M viewers.
Naturally, weekend viewership was up slightly from the weekday audiences, though the difference is marginal. Thursday saw a total audience delivery of about 32M, marking a 50% increase from the comparable day of competition in Tokyo.
Impressively, the live afternoon coverage of the women’s gymnastics all-around, where Simone Biles and Suni Lee earned medals for Team USA, averaged 10.9M viewers across NBC and Peacock.
According to NBCU, total audience delivery is based upon live-plus-same day custom fast national figures from Nielsen and digital data from Adobe Analytics. Live viewership from 2-5 p.m. ET (Paris Prime) is inclusive of NBC, Peacock, USA Network, E!, CNBC, Paris Extra 1, Paris Extra 2, and additional NBCU digital platforms. Primetime viewership includes NBC, Peacock, USA Network, Paris Extra 1 and Paris Extra 2.
