The viewership of the Olympic opening ceremony is Olympic That will be the outcome in terms of the number of people that will pay attention to the product.
For example, the 2021 opening ceremony of the Tokyo Summer Olympics, which was postponed due to COVID-19, averaged 17 million viewers across NBC’s platforms, the smallest audience of any opening ceremony in the modern era.
By the end of the Games, the Tokyo Summer Olympics had averaged 15.6 million viewers per night across NBC’s various television and digital platforms, the lowest primetime viewership ever for an Olympic Games, Summer or Winter, and a significant decrease from the 19.8 million viewers averaged during the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Now, the viewership numbers for Friday’s Paris Opening Ceremony have been released, and they’re staggering. NBCUniversal said the Opening Ceremony had a total audience of 28.6 million viewers, according to custom high-speed national data from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics. Telemundo Deportes increased its viewership for the Opening Ceremony by 666,000 viewers.
This is the most-watched opening ceremony since the London 2012 Games.
The 28.6 million viewer count included both the afternoon live and primetime presentations on NBC and Peacock. Speaking specifically to Peacock, NBC said the Opening Ceremony was its most-streamed event ever (with over 2.5 million viewers) and ranked as the highest-rated entertainment event in Peacock history.
NBC said its viewership totals were based on Nielsen live and same-day custom fast national data and Adobe Analytics digital data. Official viewership numbers will be released on Monday.
Paris is six hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, and this time difference has changed how NBC thinks about its primetime programming: Competition days in Paris run from 3am to 5pm Eastern Standard Time, meaning the most popular events of the day will be broadcast live across NBC platforms in the morning and afternoon.
NBC’s primetime Olympics coverage, titled “Prime Time in Paris,” has as its main goal explaining to American viewers how and why the results earlier in the day came about.
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(Photo by Ryan Pierce/Getty Images)
