Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony Viewership Sees Gold Medal Results For NBCUniversal With Huge Rise From Tokyo

Good news for NBCUniversal: The Paris Olympics are off to a great start with a big win out of Friday’s Opening Ceremony.

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Nearly 29 million tuned in for the extravaganza, according to Nielsen and Adobe Analytics.

That’s a more than 60% leap up from the pandemic-delayed 2021 Tokyo Olympics, which netted a mere 17 million viewers across NBC platforms three years ago as it took place in empty stadiums.

In fact, in data melding the live midday Opening Ceremony coverage and the slightly more streamlined special primetime presentation, the Total Audience Delivery of 28.6 million viewers on NBC and Peacock also saw an 8% increase over the 2016 Rio Opening Ceremony.

The 2024 Opening Ceremony also snagged another 666,000 viewers from Telemundo Deportes, NBCU says.

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All in all, NBCU is calling this the best Olympics Opening Ceremony viewership results since the 40.7 million who tuned in for the London 2012 opener and its parachuting Queen Elizabeth II showstopper. That UK result 12 years ago still stands as one of the most watched Opening Ceremonies ever.

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With all that, beyond the pandemic delayed Tokyo Summer Games, there is no fair comparison for Friday’s opening ceremony. Previous to the competition in Japan, which was set for Peacock’s 2020 debut before being pushed back a year due to Covid lockdowns, all Summer Games on NBC and other NBCU-controlled channels and outlets were in the Comcast-owned company’s pre-steaming era. In that context, given NBCU’s push toward programming for the streamer rather than their linear counterparts, there’s not exactly a direct audience comparisons here.

To that, with 2.5 million viewers, the Paris Opening Ceremony looks to be the most-streamed ever in Peacock history, and stands as the outlet’s top entertainment event too.

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However, remember this hometown crowd, LA 2028 won’t get off so easy.

Not that NBC Sports aren’t flexing some bragging muscles right now.

“Last night’s Opening Ceremony, one of the most ambitious and complex in Olympic history, was a spectacle for those in attendance in Paris, delivered a huge audience across our NBCU platforms, and set records for Peacock,” said NBC Sports President. Rick Cordella. Saturday, basking in a little Olympics glory of his own clearly. “Thanks to the tireless effort of our production and engineering teams, and extensive promotion, we are off to a strong start that is in line with the expectations of our NBC stations, and distribution and advertising partners. We are in great position as we look forward to the next two weeks of competition.”

Needing a little less indulgence, the nearly four-hour extravaganza saw more than 200 delegations of competing athletes traveling down the Seine on barges, some Celine Dion, some Aya Nakamura, some Lady Gaga, some heavy metal, some parkour, some couture, some drag queens and some cultural buttons pushed, and more than a dozen headless Marie Antoinettes — as well as a lot of rain. After the soggy showcase to the world, French President Emmanuel Macron took to social media to offer his succinct support to the criticized extravaganza put together by artistic director Thomas Jolly.

The strong Opening Ceremony viewership data for NBCU this Summer Olympics comes on a day that saw Team USA score its firstgGold medal and a record-breaking silver in the men’s and women’s swimming.

Sunday will be a big day for Team USA too, with Simon Biles making her first appearance of the Paris Games. In her third Olympics, the four-time gold-medal-winning gymnast will be in qualifying for team and individual events.

Looking a bit to the north and the home of Dion, 13.3 million Canadians tuned into watch the Paris Opening Ceremony on Friday on the CBC, sports nets TSN and RDS and other channels. Like the Stateside results, that’s a big climb form Tokyo 2021 — a 33% lift to be specific.

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