Several factors behind decline in viewership

But streaming continues to see massive increases.

NBC’S Mike Tirico began Friday’s Winter Olympics opening ceremony by saying, “just over six months ago in Tokyo, we said we were about to embark on an Olympics unlike any other. Now we’re about to top that.”

In the case of ratings, though, topping that has meant producing record lows.

Through the first four nights of competition, NBC is on track for the lowest-rated Winter Games in history. Friday night’s coverage on NBC, USA Network and Peacock averaged 12.8 million viewers, significantly down from the 27.8 million average in Pyeongchang four years ago.

Thursday night’s audience of 8 million marks the smallest prime-time Olympics audience on record, surpassing the 9 million that tuned in for the closing ceremony of the Tokyo Games.

NBC saw a steady increase in viewers Saturday and Sunday night, but the ratings are down more than half compared to Pyeongchang. Preliminary figures from Saturday show 13.6 million, and 13.7 million from Sunday.

The numbers are stark but not a surprise. Strained relations between the United States and China due to economic and human rights issues, another Olympics held during the COVID19 pandemic, and a lack of buzz coming into the Games have been significant factors.

“There are a whole range of subliminal factors that are negatives when it comes to an event in China,” said Neal Pilson, the former president of CBS Sports who now runs his own sports television consulting company. “It just adds to the obvious issues, and it leads to the American public being not as interested in the Games this year.”

The 2018 Pyeongchang Games marked the first time since 2006 that no night averaged at least 30 million viewers. Last year’s Tokyo Olympics averaged above 20 million only one of 17 nights and produced the nine smallest Summer Games prime-time audiences going to 1992.

Tokyo also marked the first time the preceding Winter Games averaged a higher audience. Beijing also marks the first time since 1992 that two Olympics are taking place only six months apart.

“The sky is definitely not falling. Yes, we have run into a bunch of bad factors that have made it harder for us. But most importantly, we had a realistic view on the audiences we were going to deliver, and we are delivering what we promised to the marketing community,” Nbcuniversal Television Chairman Mark Lazarus said. “But our trend line is pretty good. Our ratings have gone up the last three days.”

While television viewers are down, streaming continues to see massive increases. The first four days topped 1 billion streaming minutes, marking the fastest ever for a Winter Games. That puts Nbcand Peacock on pace to surpass the total of 2.17 billion minutes from Pyeongchang by the end of this week.

The record for any Olympics was 4.48 billion minutes from the Tokyo Games. The 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, totaled 420 million minutes.