Tokyo Olympics viewership down 42% from Rio 2016

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PARK CITY — Despite Team USA’s excellent performance in the 2020 Summer Olympics, NBC recorded its lowest audience ever since they started broadcasting the event in 1988.

The 2020 Summer Games had an average prime-time audience of 15.5 million viewers over 17 days, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported.

The report highlighted a 42 percent decline in viewership when compared to the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro.

The reduction in viewers was somewhat expected by NBC executives, given the difficulty of the games having to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.

“When you look at the numbers in general and the impact that Covid has had on sports, we were prepared for these numbers,” NBC Sports Chairman Pete Bevacqua told the Journal. “For better or worse, I really do believe the pandemic and postponement impacted these games.”

Despite the struggles, Mr. Bevacqua told the WSJ the 2020 Games will still be very profitable for the company. He also said their broadcast dominated the television market during the length of the event.

Ad sales actually exceeded those of the 2016 Rio Games.

NBC owns the U.S. media rights to broadcast the Olympics through 2032. The media conglomerate paid roughly $1.1 billion to show the Tokyo Games.

NBC used the event to help promote its new streaming service Peacock, which created headaches for some Olympic fans.

In The Verge, Catie Keck wrote an article called ‘It’s not just you, streaming the Olympics is a mess.’

Keck reports that the opening ceremony wasn’t even streamed on Peacock despite it being live on the NBC Olympics website.

“The service is paywalling men’s basketball, seemingly to boost Peacock’s paid plans,” Keck writes. “And while live broadcasts and on-demand coverage of most other games and events are available for free on Peacock, finding out what’s on and where to watch it has been a chore, comparable to flicking through a cable TV guide.”

Peacock also doesn’t support 4K coverage, a feature NBC touted in marketing leading up to the Games.