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The Paris 2024 Olympics are starting out with a ratings bang for NBCUniversal. The summer games have scored a total audience delivery average of 33.8 million viewers in their first four days of programming, combining live Paris prime and U.S. primetime time periods — a 77% increase in viewership from Tokyo, which reported 19.1 million viewers in the same time period.
Monday’s primetime presentation across NBC, Peacock and other NBCU platforms continued to gather interest from viewers, posting 31.3 million total viewers, according to data from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics. The day’s figures mark a 70% increase from the opening Monday of competition at the Tokyo 2021 Olympics, which gathered 18.4 million viewers across platforms.
Events featured on Monday included the U.S. men’s gymnastics team winning a bronze medal, its first in the team competition since 2008, along with coverage of beach volleyball and medal-winning runs by swimmers Katie Grimes, Emma Weyant, Luke Hobson and Ryan Murphy.
The U.S. women’s basketball team won its opening game against Japan in its run toward an unprecedented eighth consecutive gold medal, averaging 3 million viewers on USA Network and Peacock — topping all men’s and women’s basketball at the Tokyo Olympics, apart from the gold medal bouts.
Coverage of the games on Peacock also saw further gains, surpassing combined totals of the full Beijing and Tokyo Olympics. Monday’s programming was streamed by 4.5 million viewers on Peacock and NBCU digital platforms.
The company measures total audience delivery based on live-plus-same day custom fast national data from Nielsen and digital data provided by Adobe Analytics.
On Telemundo, Peacock and Telemundo streaming platforms, the first four days of the 2024 Paris Olympics averaged 318,000 viewers — up 44% from viewership for the Tokyo Games in the same timeframe — with the events drawing over 1.1 billion viewers across Telemundo, Universo, Peacock and Telemundo streaming platforms — a 65% uptick when compared to the 2020 Olympics. The USA women’s soccer team’s victory over Germany on Sunday became the most-watched event so far with 731,000 viewers on Telemundo.
Tuesday’s primetime programming should continue to boast gains, as it features coverage of the gold medal-winning group performance by the U.S. women’s gymnastics team, headlined by Simone Biles, along with women’s 100-m backstroke, other swimming competitions and coverage of the surfing finals.
