NBC Summer Olympics ratings are plummeting

NBC’s television audience for the Summer Olympics is down 45% from Rio’s 2016 games. Prime-time audiences are even worse, down 51%.

The good news for NBC is that its prime-time TV coverage still averages around 13.5 million viewers, attracting a larger audience than most of its rivals’ shows today. NBC’s Total Audience Coverage – which compiles audiences across broadcast TV, cable and streaming – gives that prime-time number a little boost, averaging 16.8 million viewers, depending on the network.

The other bright spot for NBC is that the Tokyo Games have found an audience through digital platforms and streaming.

The network boasted that Peacock, its streaming service, had a strong following for the games. On Tuesday, NBC said viewers streamed 3 billion minutes of Olympic Games coverage on NBCOlympics.com, the NBC Sports app and its Peacock streaming services. In addition, NBC said that number “is set to exceed the Rio Olympics total in the coming days.”

But why, in the traditional television sense, are audiences in free fall? After all, these are the Olympics – historically one of the most watched TV shows in the world. Its ability to pull together a wide range of viewers is one of the main reasons NBC is paying billions of dollars to broadcast the games over the next decade.

One major reason: the world of television is radically different from what it was five years ago. With the rise of social media and streaming, audiences have more to watch than ever before, resulting in increased media fragmentation.

The pandemic may have also played a role in the decline in viewership. Before the games even started, organizers had to debate whether they should be staged. From a TV standpoint, it didn’t help that the global health crisis made the games go without spectators – something that makes the sport more fun for viewers.

On top of that, finding competitions and games on different NBC platforms may have confused some viewers who were looking for a specific sport or athlete to watch, a complication further exacerbated by the 13-hour time difference between Tokyo and the East Coast. the United States.

Whatever the reason, television numbers for the Olympics are down. And the games are running out of time to catch up with NBC and its advertisers.