Combined Olympics audience back over 30 million Thursday

The Olympics delivered another combined audience in excess of 30 million on Thursday, while nearly eleven million tuned in for Simone Biles’ lunchtime win in gymnastics’ all-around.

Thursday’s “primetime” coverage of the Paris Summer Olympics averaged 31.7 million viewers across the full suite of NBC networks (per Nielsen and Adobe Analytics), a figure that includes live afternoon coverage from 2-5 PM ET and primetime replay from 8-11 — up 50% from the equivalent day of the COVID-delayed Tokyo Olympics in 2021 (21.1M).

With a streaming audience of 4.4 million per Adobe Analytics, the Nielsen-measured audience was in the neighborhood of 27.3 million.

Live coverage of the women’s gymnastics all-around competition — won by Simone Biles with Suni Lee placing third — aired largely outside of the “primetime” window and averaged 10.9 million. That compares to 12.7 million for the women’s team final on Tuesday.

The primetime figure did include 2.1 million viewers for the United States women’s basketball team matchup with Belgium on USA Network and Peacock, down from 3.0 million for their opener against Japan.

Through the first week, NBC’s “primetime” Olympics coverage is now averaging 33.0 million viewers across the live afternoon portion and primetime replay, all of the NBC platforms, and the combination of Nielsen and Adobe Analytics — up 76% from Tokyo (18.8M).

Comparisons to earlier Olympics are apples-to-oranges at best. The 2012 London Olympics averaged 35.1 million viewers through the first seven nights, but that figure was for a single primetime window on a single network measured by a single company that solely tracked in-home viewing. At the same time, it was also an era when linear television viewing was considerably higher than today.

As the centralized primetime audience of 2012 has fractured, the definition of Olympic “primetime” has expanded to encompass concurrent cable networks, a secondary measurement company and now a live afternoon broadcast — to say nothing of out-of-home viewing, which Nielsen added to its estimates in 2020. It is arguably the case that NBC is capturing a more accurate estimate of the audience than in the primetime-only era, even as there is little (if any) relevant context for this year’s figures.

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