NBC announces primetime Olympic coverage averaging more than 30 million viewers

The 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris have continued to be a ratings boon for NBC. And the network shared another positive note on the ratings front on Saturday afternoon.

Primetime coverage of the Olympics on NBC — both the “Paris Prime” programming and U.S. primetime events — have averaged 32.4 million viewers, the network shared. That’s a notable bump from the previous summer games.

All told, it’s a 74% increase on the viewership that NBC averaged during the Tokyo summer games in 2021.

And as the games start to move out of the pool and toward more track and field events — and as the respective basketball tournaments move into medal rounds — it’s a safe bet the interest in the games stateside isn’t going to be waning.

Some events have been massive for ratings

According to numbers acquired by Sports Business Journal, the United States Women’s Olympic Gymnastics team caught the attention of more than 10 million pairs of eyes on a weekday afternoon.

SBJ posted on Thursday a story detailing the television ratings for the gymnastics finals and how they stack up compared to other major sporting events. Apparently, the figure blew away any expectations.

“Team USA’s win in the women’s gymnastics team final on Tuesday afternoon helped deliver 12.7 million viewers on NBC/Peacock, as Simone Biles’ star power helped deliver strong numbers even on a workday afternoon,” the story reads.

In fact, the gym team and their performance rated as one of the top daytime events ever in Olympic broadcasts.

“The window from 12:15-2:30pm ET, which falls largely outside of what NBC’s larger reported number is for Tuesday’s coverage, is among the best Olympic weekday daytime events ever for NBC Olympics (likely No. 1 all-time for the superlative),” SBJ added.

More folks even tuned in for the gymnastics events than they did for the highest-rated game between the Celtics and Mavericks in the 2024 NBA Finals.

“The audience for the event ranks ahead of every game from the recent Celtics-Mavericks (Game 2 was the best at 12.3 million),” said SBJ. “It also beat out the audience for the first round of the 2024 NFL Draft across ABC, ESPN and NFL Network (11.6 million for that event).”

Lastly, the SBJ adds that this was one of the most-watched TV events of the entire 2024 year to date:

“The gymnastics event on its own right now ranks among the 50 most-watched telecasts on all of U.S. TV for 2024.”

Alex Weber contributed to this report.