NBC, Peacock capture 28.6M viewers for Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony

NBCUniversal marked success for its coverage of the Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony, which across NBC and Peacock delivered a total audience of 28.6 million viewers.

NBC disclosed the stats, based on custom fast national data Nielsen and Adobe Analytics, over the weekend. Viewership covers both Friday’s live afternoon coverage and NBCU's primetime presentation. In addition, its Spanish-language Telemundo Deportes network delivered 666,000 viewers.

According to NBC, this year’s Opening Ceremony was the most-watched for a Summer Olympics since London 2012, with viewership reflecting an audience that was 60% larger than the Tokyo Opening Ceremony (which had 17.9 million viewers) and an 8% bump over the Rio Opening Ceremony (versus 26.5 million viewers).

Ahead of the Games, NBCU rolled out a slew of user experience updates on the Peacock streaming service to help consumers navigate and engage with the wide-ranging event. 

And viewers showed up to stream the Opening Ceremony, which ranked as the most-streamed ever and is now the top entertainment event in Peacock’s history – garnering more than 2.5 million viewers on the streaming platform.

Peacock led streaming consumption for the Paris Olympics across NBCU platforms, which exceeded 1 billion minutes through Friday, reflecting a 6x increase over the Tokyo Olympics across a comparable time period.

NBCU earlier this year already reported securing $1.2 billion in Olympic ad sales, which as of April were on track to generate the most ad revenue in Olympics history . On Saturday the company touted boosts for brands advertising in the Opening Ceremony. Citing EDO linear data (spanning live and primetime coverage), NBCU said Opening Ceremony brand advertisers generated more than 320% greater search volume than those that advertised in the Tokyo Opening Ceremony.

Looking at how consumers watched the event, Peacock wasn’t the only streaming platform to attract viewers to the Opening Ceremony.

AdImpact tracked live afternoon-only coverage (aka not the primetime presentation) of the Opening Ceremony, where it found average viewership to be approximately 13.7 million, peaking around 4:30 pm ET with an estimated audience of 15.7 million. 

Of that, it the firm said streaming platforms collectively accounted for 40% of total Opening Ceremony viewership – although linear TV still reigned, making up the majority 60% share of total viewing. Note, AdImpact distinguishes linear content as viewed via a set-top box, direct cable connection or antenna connection versus streaming content as through a TV native app or OTT streaming device.

And while delivering a cable-like linear pay TV network lineup, Google’s virtual MVPD YouTube TV was one streaming service that drove and captured a notable share of viewership for the live Opening Ceremony, accounting for 10% of the estimated total, per AdImpact. Regular YouTube, meanwhile, accounted for 1%.