Olympics Ratings Picked Up Significantly Over Weekend

by Karlene Lukovitz , July 27, 2021

Following opening ceremonies ratings that were the lowest seen since 1988, viewership trends for the Tokyo Olympics picked up over the weekend, NBC reported.

Events including swimming, women’s gymnastics, and the triathlon drove a 61% ratings gain from Friday through Sunday — the largest increase ever in the first three nights of a Summer Olympics, according to NBC.

The games’ primetime audience on Saturday, across NBC broadcast and cable networks including NBCSN, USA Network and CNBC, averaged about 15.3 million.

Sunday’s coverage, which included the USA men’s basketball game, drew 15.5 million broadcast and cable viewers — more than double the primetime viewership of ABC, CBS, Fox and CW combined — and about 19.8 million across all NBCUniversal platforms.

The broadcast/cable viewership was the largest for any primetime show since this year’s Super Bowl, NBC said.

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2 comments about "Olympics Ratings Picked Up Significantly Over Weekend".

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Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, July 28, 2021 at 11:28 a.m.
While 19.8 million average commercial minute "viewers" may seem like a lot it represents only 6-7% of the total popuation.And how many of these watched the average commercial---40%--45%? What would be more interesting---when the data becomes available---would be the total cummulative reach of the Olympics---including those who zapped the commercials, with breakdowns of time spent groups as well as the percentage who zapped ads every time they tuned in or played the event on a DVR. Somehow, I doubt that such figures will be released---but I could be wrong.
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John Grono from GAP Research, July 28, 2021 at 6:02 p.m.

Very true Ed.

The average minute audience of 19.8m people may have been calculated over a lengthy session (I think we run something like six sessions across the day here) so the reach across that session may have been significantly higher. Then if you meld the sessions together into an 'all day' number generally the average minute audience decreases, but the daily reach increases. This pattern then holds when you add the next day.

So, yes Ed, when the Olympics are completed a compendium of session, daily and total event data (average minute audience, daily peaks and nett reach) would tell the complete story.