• by Wayne Friedman , August 12, 2024

Soaring Paris Olympics viewership accelerated toward the end of its 16-day event, with the men’s basketball game on Saturday reaching 19.5 million viewers, according to Nielsen and Adobe Analytics. 

The medal game -- in which the U.S. won over France -- featured top NBA players LeBron James, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant and posted the best TV viewership result since the 1996 Atlanta Olympics game, at 25.8 million.

Saturday’s game grew to 22.7 million between 5 p.m. and 5:15 p.m. NBCU also says the basketball game was the most-streamed event across its platforms -- with 2.7 million average minute viewers. 

Overall, the Paris games on Saturday averaged 31.3  million viewers across NBC, Peacock and other NBCU platforms/networks -- up 82% from Tokyo Olympics in 2021, at 17.2 million.

For the entire 16-day period, the NBC Television Network amassed 9.83 billion impressions, according to EDO Ad EnGage, with USA Network at 4.25 billion, E! at 773.8 million, CNBC at 154.1 million and The Golf Channel at 294.9 million.

Brands witnessed high search engagement rates across the two-week Olympic period across nearly all NBCU networks -- up 164% in minutes following a commercial on the NBC Television Network -- up 232% on USA Network and up 110% on E!.