The first ever waterborne Olympics opening ceremony drew a big audience for NBCUniversal on Friday.
The official start of the Paris games drew 28.6 million viewers on the broadcast network and Peacock, along with about 670,000 more on Telemundo, according custom fast national figures from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics. That’s the biggest audience for a Summer Olympics opening since 2012 in London (40.7 million viewers), surpassing both 2016 in Rio de Janeiro (26.5 million) and 2021 in Tokyo (17.9 million).
Including the Winter Olympics as well, Friday’s event — which featured performances by Lady Gaga and Celine Dion, among others — was the biggest opening ceremony since the 2014 winter games in Russia (31.69 million viewers).
For the opening ceremony and the rest of the Olympics, NBC’s ratings figures will combine live telecasts during the day (2-5 p.m. ET most days) and a primetime replay.
Peacock’s stream of the opening ceremony, in which athletes from 205 delegations arrived in boats on the River Seine, grabbed 2.5 million viewers, making it the most streamed opening ceremony to date and the platform’s biggest entertainment event ever. Including a few competitions that preceded Friday’s ceremony, Peacock and other NBCUniversal digital platforms have amassed a billion minutes of streaming through Friday — six times as much as in Tokyo three years ago. (Peacock’s subscriber base has grown by almost four times since the last Summer Olympics.)
“Last night’s opening ceremony, one of the most ambitious and complex in Olympic history, was a spectacle for those in attendance in Paris, delivered a huge audience across our NBCU platforms, and set records for Peacock,” said NBC Sports president Rick Cordella. “Thanks to the tireless effort of our production and engineering teams, and extensive promotion, we are off to a strong start that is in line with the expectations of our NBC stations, and distribution and advertising partners. We are in great position as we look forward to the next two weeks of competition.”
