NBC’s Paris opening ceremony sees growth over disappointing Tokyo viewership

A total of 28.6 million people watched NBC’s coverage of the 2024 Summer Olympics‘ opening ceremony held Friday, July 26, 2024.

According to initial data from Adobe Analytics and Nielsen, the 2024 opener was up 60% over the 2020 Summer Olympics ceremony, which was held in 2021 due to a COVID-19 delay. 17 million people watched that ceremony. 

2024’s spectacle on the Seine also outranked the 2018 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janiero opening ceremony by 8%.

It didn’t, however, beat the ceremony for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, which delivered 40.7 million viewers.

In addition to its broadcast network, 2.5 million people streamed the ceremonies. Total streaming minutes came in at 1 billion, which represented six-fold growth over Tokyo. 

NBC’s ratings combined viewership from the live dayside broadcast of the opener and later primetime replay. 

That figure does not include an additional 666,000 viewers who watched a Spanish-language simulcast of the event on Telemundo.

NBC aired the first hour of the live broadcast of the opening ceremony without commercials. Instead, partners Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, Eli Lilly, Toyota, Visa and Comcast Xfinity each agreed to co-sponsor the extended block in exchange for their logo appearing on-screen during a part of that 60 minutes. 

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The network also had the advantage of what was initially rumored performances from singers Lady Gaga and Celine Dion, both of which proved true. Gaga performed early in the ceremony, with Dion serving as the grand finale.

Dion’s performance from midway up the Eiffel Tower marked her first live one since 2022, when she announced she had been diagnosed with a rare disease known as stiff-person syndrome. 

Tokyo’s Olympics, which took place under heavy COVID-19 protocols and often devoid of in-person spectators, averaged just 15.6 million viewers during primetime coverage. This was an all-time record low for coverage of any Olympics — summer or winter.

Summer and winter Olympics ratings are typically compared against other games of the same season because they tend to feature mostly the same lineup of events and air at similar times of the year. 

The summer Olympics, however, tend to attract more viewership overall. 

According to initial polling, general interest in the Olympics is significantly down in 2024, and fewer adults say they plan to tune-in to coverage. That includes a record high of 30% saying they plan to watch “none” of the coverage in a Gallup poll.

That said, data does show that the Olympics continue to skew higher for Americans of higher socioeconomic status, which could potentially still be a winning combination for NBC and its advertisers. 

None of the pre-Olympics polling data is a guarantee of actual viewership, though the continuing decrease in interest in the games is hard to ignore as being a potential challenge for networks.