The consensus expectation among sports media and TV observers was that ratings for the 2022 Winter Olympics would be lower than its predecessors for NBC. Perhaps even the lowest ever.
One day after the closing ceremony in Beijing, the numbers are in and met those lowered expectations. According to NBC, the network averaged 10.7 million viewers per night during the Winter Games. Across all platforms, including USA Network and streaming numbers on Peacock, that number increased to 11.4 million.
The previous Winter Games in PyeongChang averaged 17.5 million live and same day primetime viewers and increased to 18.2 million when one week of delayed viewing was counted. (Streaming wasn’t as much of an option for viewers in 2018.) So the Beijing Games suffered a 39 percent drop in audience by comparison.
Last year’s Tokyo Summer Olympics averaged 15.6 million viewers across television and digital platforms. At the time, those were the lowest numbers ever for an Olympic Games. (And the PyeongChang numbers were the lowest before that, so you can see the downward trend.)
A number of factors will surely be cited for the decline in viewership. There was a lack of interest in the Winter Games just six months after the COVID-19 delayed Summer Games were held. Concern and protest over China’s human rights violations were certainly a consideration. And the 13-hour time difference between Beijing and the U.S. Eastern time zone meant results were known long before they could be shown in primetime.
TV viewership in general has decreased during the pandemic, while viewers have many more options to consider with streaming platforms with shows and movies that are in the cultural conversation more than the Winter Olympics.
But for the “nobody watched the Winter Olympics” naysayers, NBC can still boast that the Beijing Games drew the highest primetime audience since last September for anything besides NFL telecasts (Sunday, Monday, and Thursday nights).
And some media observers, such as Sports Business Journal‘s John Ourand, believe future Olympics telecast will be on the upswing with less of a time difference in Paris and Italy, followed by the 2028 Summer Olympics being held in Los Angeles.