NBC Draws Lowest Olympics Ratings Ever

The Beijing Winter Olympic Games drew the smallest average U.S. prime-time audience ever recorded for the Olympics since NBCUniversal began broadcasting the event decades ago, reports the Wall Street Journal.

The Winter Olympics—aired across the broadcast, cable and streaming platforms of Comcast Corp.’s NBCU—drew an average of 11.4 million prime-time viewers over the more than two-week run, the company said. This was a roughly 42% drop from the Pyeongchang Olympics in 2018, which had recorded the lowest Olympics audience until that point.

“This was probably the most difficult Olympics of all time,” NBC Sports Chairman Pete Bevacqua said. Advertisers were given additional commercial time to make up for the audience shortfall. “They were made whole throughout the entire Olympics,” Mr. Bevacqua said of advertisers.

The highest night of prime-time viewership occurred on Sunday, Feb. 13, following NBC’s broadcast of Super Bowl LVI.

The Beijing Olympics faced the same issues as the Tokyo Summer Games, which occurred last summer after being postponed a year due to the coronavirus pandemic. Mr. Bevacqua pointed to difficulties such as few spectators, athletes wearing masks, no family and friends in the stands and “very harsh protocols in China” related to Covid-19.

NBC kept its announcing team in its U.S. facilities rather than on-site to call the events. “We had 1,600 people in Stamford[, Conn.] and 600 people in Beijing. Normally that would be flipped for us,” Mr. Bevacqua said.

The Beijing Games continued the trend of declining Olympics viewership. The Tokyo Summer Games averaged 15.5 million prime-time viewers, NBC’s lowest-rating Summer Olympics since it began broadcasting them in 1988. Pyeongchang averaged 19.8 million viewers in 2018, which at the time drew the lowest-ever Olympics ratings. NBCU started broadcasting the Winter Olympics in 2002.

The importance of having spectators in the crowd at sporting events continued to show, Mr. Bevacqua said, citing the NFL as an example. Viewership for regular-season NFL games in 2021 surpassed the 2020 season’s, when viewers weren’t allowed in the stands early in the pandemic and before vaccines were widely distributed.

Peacock, NBC’s streaming service, stood out as a bright spot during the Beijing Olympics, following criticism and disappointed fans during the Tokyo Games.

Unlike during the Summer Games, Peacock aired the entire Olympics—live events and replays—for its paying subscribers. The company said 4.3 billion minutes of the Olympics were streamed across its platforms, led by Peacock, which also recorded its best 18-day span of usage since launching less than two years ago.

“For Peacock, it was a home run,” Mr. Bevacqua said. “We drastically improved our strategy in the time between Tokyo and Beijing.”