Less than a week into the Paris Olympics, NBC Universal executives are climbing atop the medal stand.
The event has been a significant success for the company broadcasting and streaming it in the United States. NBC already has set a record for advertising revenue, viewership is up significantly and its biggest fear — that people would tune out NBC’s prime-time telecast because they could watch events live during the day — hasn’t materialized.
“Clearly, the Olympics are back,” Mark Lazarus, chairman of the NBC Universal Media Group, said Thursday. A strong performance by the U.S. team has helped, he said.
It’s a relief to NBC, after the Beijing Winter Games in 2022 and COVID-19-delayed Tokyo Summer Games in 2021 were comparative duds. Through five days beginning with Friday’s opening ceremony, the company averaged 34 million people a day watching on NBC, cable networks and Peacock, up from 19 million over the same period in Tokyo.
The company said it has taken in more than $1.25 billion in advertising revenue, its best-ever for an Olympics, and still has more time to sell.
“It’s hard to paint it as anything but rosy,” said Andy Billings, a University of Alabama journalism professor and author of “Olympic Television: Inside the Biggest Show on Earth.”
The time difference — Paris is six hours ahead of the Eastern time zone — is ideal for people who want to watch events live during the day in the United States. NBC Sports President Rick Cordella said the network is heartened by the number of people watching during what is generally the workday back home; NBC is even happily taking credit for dwindled workplace productivity.
Live daytime coverage of the women’s gymnastics team final reached 12.7 million people on NBC and Peacock, the network said. Even though it started on a Sunday morning, the U.S. men’s basketball team had 11 million people watching its opening game against Serbia, more than the number of people who saw the gold-medal game from Tokyo.
Before this year, NBC had generally resisted showing events live unless they took place in the evening hours in the U.S. It was a particular issue in London in 2012, when NBC restricted live events to streaming; Lazarus declined the chance to second-guess those decisions.
“Times have changed and I think we are showing forward-thinking and being progressive in our case in how to produce and exhibit the Games,” he said.
So far the network is pleased with its prime-time numbers, even if those telecasts mostly consist of reruns of events available live earlier. On Sunday, for example, Nielsen said 18.5 million people watched NBC’s prime-time telecast alone, out of 41.5 million who saw Olympics content all day on Peacock or any network.
“It doesn’t matter if they know the results,” said Molly Solomon, executive producer of the Olympics. “They want to know the stories of the athletes and how things played out.”
Even though they are reruns, the prime-time telecasts can be easier to watch because they cut out some of the dead time, Billings said. NBC said it didn’t have statistics yet on double-dippers — people who may have seen an event live then watched it again in prime time.
NBC said the number of people streaming “Gold Zone” on Peacock — a whip-around feed that takes viewers to different high-profile events, modeled after pro football’s “Red Zone” show — has doubled since it premiered on Saturday.
If NBC Universal can keep a significant number of people who subscribed to Peacock for the Olympics from cancelling when the torch is snuffed out, that could make the difference between a success and a smash for the company, Billings said. So far, Peacock has avoided the technical glitches that plagued it in Tokyo.
The network is standing by its decision to make the Olympics more celebrity-focused, saying it creates a social media buzz that helps its telecasts. Cameras frequently catch movie and sports stars alike rooting on Olympic athletes from the stands.
“The only surprise so far is that a Kardashian hasn’t made it to one of the events yet,” wrote Greg Braxton of the Los Angeles Times. “But it’s still early.”
Kelly Clarkson and Peyton Manning’s performance during the opening ceremony illustrated how it’s a challenging job even for professional broadcasters. Solomon said roving correspondent Snoop Dogg’s reception from fans and athletes alike has been positive, so expect plenty more airtime from him.
“We’ve been pleasantly surprised by his popularity, but you never underestimate Snoop Dogg,” Solomon said. “He’s this wonderful mix of swagger and positivity.”
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This story has been corrected to show that the London Olympics were in 2012, not 2016.
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David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://twitter.com/dbauder.
