Olympic Gymnastics, Swimming and Basketball Helped Drive Paris 2024 Ratings to Record Highs

The Paris 2024 Olympics concluded its 16-day run with an average viewership 82% higher than the Tokyo Games, with buzz surrounding Simone Biles’ Olympic comeback and other U.S. victories across basketball and swimming drawing the biggest audiences.

Coverage of the Summer Games averaged 30.7 million linear and streaming viewers across Paris Prime (daytime coverage, 2-5 p.m. ET) and U.S. primetime hours, soaring above the 16.9 million viewers brought in by the 2021 Tokyo Games and the 2016 Rio Olympics, which averaged 26.8 million in U.S. primetime. From the Opening Ceremony, which kicked off the Games strong with 28.6 million viewers, the 2024 Olympics began trending higher than the Tokyo audience, with the Paris opener seeing a 60% uptick from its 2021 equivalent.

Day-by-day winners

As expected, viewing for coverage of the Games spiked on weekends — specifically Sundays — with July 28 scoring the biggest daily viewership of the 2024 Olympics with a whopping 41.5 million viewers. That day’s programming, which nearly doubled the comparable audience for Tokyo’s opening Sunday of competition, followed as Biles took the top score in the women’s gymnastics qualification round, as well as several U.S. victories across swimming and rugby.

The four most-watched days of the 2024 Games coincided with women’s gymnastics events. Sunday, July 28, marked the women’s qualification round, while Sunday, Aug. 4, which brought in 35.4 million viewers, saw Suni Lee winning bronze in the uneven bars final.

Tuesday, July 30, the day of the women’s team final, was the third most-watched day of the Olympics with 34.7 million viewers. And Saturday, Aug. 3, which featured individual finals for women’s vault and men’s pommel horse — including beloved gymnast Stephen Nedoroscik taking the bronze — and floor, came shortly behind as the No. 4 most-watched day with 34.6 million viewers.

Both Saturday, Aug. 3 and Sunday, Aug. 4, got a boost from swimming events, which saw Katie Ledecky take home her ninth gold medal in the 800-meter freestyle, as well as from basketball, where both the U.S. women’s and men’s teams progressed to the semifinals. 

The Games lost some steam, ratings-wise, in the last few days, with Friday, Aug. 9, marking the Paris Olympics’ least watched day with 25.6 million viewers, excluding the Closing Ceremony’s viewership of 20.9 million. Friday’s viewership was just barely outpaced by Wednesday, Aug. 7, which drew in the second smallest daily audience with 25.7 million viewers. 

However, the U.S. men’s basketball team’s victory over France to win the gold on Aug. 10 smashed viewership records, bringing in 19.5 million views across NBC and Peacock to rank as the most-watched gold medal game since the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

Streaming dominates

With the 2024 Games marking the second Summer Olympics and third Olympics overall since Peacock launched in 2020, streaming gained even more steam as the preferred method for viewers to watch the event’s coverage.

Overall, the 2024 Games tallied 23.5 billion streaming minutes, led by Peacock. That was up 40% from all prior Summer and Winter Olympics combined, which totaled 16.8 billion minutes across NBCUniversal digital platforms.

Less than two weeks into the event, on the morning of Tuesday, Aug. 6, the Paris Olympics surpassed the previous streaming record with 17 billion minutes streamed across Peacock and other digital NBCUniversal platforms.

NBCUniversal Media Group Chairman Mark Lazarus called the Games “a groundbreaking moment for Peacock, which delivered a flawless user experience and cutting-edge innovation while shattering all-time Olympics streaming records.”

Over the course of the event, coverage of Paris Prime and U.S. primetime coverage averaged 4.1 million viewers daily across Peacock and NBCU Digital platforms. For comparison, the Paris Olympics averaged 13 million viewers each night across NBC and USA Network within the first 12 days of the Games.

NBCUniversal-owned networks thrive

Peacock wasn’t the only NBCUniversal platform to thrive during the 2024 Olympics, with NBCUniversal-owned networks like NBC, NBC News, USA Network and Telemundo scoring their own viewership victories. 

NBC continued its reign as the most-watched network for 152 consecutive summer Olympic nights, with the Paris Olympics boosting the broadcast network to land No. 1 in the key demo among adults 18-49. USA Network also ranked as the No. 1 cable sports/entertainment network in terms of both total day and primetime viewership over the two weeks of competition.

Over the course of the Games, NBC News’ “Today” and “NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt” ranked as the No. 1 most-watched broadcast news network in terms of total viewers and among both key demos: among adults 25-54 and adults 18-49.

Telemundo broadcast the Opening and Closing Ceremonies for the first time. Its programming marked the most coverage of the Games presented in Spanish for a U.S. audience to date. Spanish-language coverage of the Olympics averaged 289,000 viewers across Telemundo, Peacock and Telemundo streaming platforms, up 36% from Tokyo.