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≡ ANALYSIS & OBSERVATIONS ≡
NBC breathlessly announced a considerable ratings success for its coverage of the 2026 Olympic Winter Games on Monday, posting in part:
“From the most-watched Opening Ceremony in 12 years through last night’s Closing Ceremony, the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics averaged 23.5 million viewers on NBC, Peacock, NBCUniversal Digital Platforms and Versant’s CNBC and USA Network across the combined live afternoon Milan Prime window (2-5 p.m. ET) and U.S. primetime (8-11 p.m. ET/PT) time periods. Milan Cortina viewership is the highest for a Winter Games since Sochi 2014 and up 96% from the 2022 Beijing Olympics (12.0 million).
“Viewership is based on official Nielsen Big Data + Panel viewership (through Thursday 2/19) and preliminary data from Nielsen (2/20-22), and digital data from Adobe Analytics. Final data will be available later this week.”
The release also noted that the “Milan Prime (live U.S. daytime) and Primetime in Milan (U.S. primetime) coverage posted a daily streaming TAD [Total Audience Delivery] of 3.3 million viewers across Peacock and NBCU Digital platforms.”
Thus, using the preliminary 23.5 million daily average, 20.2 million (86.0%) was on NBC broadcast and the USA and CNBC cable networks.
Some additional data is now available from TheTVRatingsGuide.com, which posts Nielsen broadcast and cable data on prime-time programming only:
● 06 Feb.: 13.26 million NBC only ~ opening
● 07 Feb.: 11.15 million NBC + 1.45 million USA Network
● 08 Feb.: 20.02 million NBC only ~ Super Bowl Sunday lead-in
● 09 Feb.: 10.85 million NBC + 2.39 million USA
● 10 Feb.: 10.20 million NBC + 2.04 million USA
● 11 Feb.: 10.75 million NBC + 1.60 million USA
● 12 Feb.: 9.78 million NBC + 1.66 million USA
● 13 Feb.: 8.87 million NBC + 2.49 million USA
● 14 Feb.: 8.01 million NBC + 3.02 million USA
● 15 Feb.: 9.45 million NBC + 2.92 million USA
● 16 Feb.: 9.03 million NBC + 2.69 million USA
● 17 Feb.: 9.75 million NBC + 2.12 million USA
● 18 Feb.: 9.63 million NBC + 2.00 million USA
● 19 Feb.: 11.66 million NBC + 2.31 million USA
● 20 Feb.: 9.48 million NBC + 1.73 million USA
● 21 Feb.: 7.86 million NBC + 1.91 million USA
● 22 Feb.: 4.76 million NBC only ~ closing
Your first question is, what happened to cause the increase on 19 February? Easy: the women’s Free Skate in figure skating and the U.S. women won the ice hockey gold-medal match against Canada, two of the highlights of the Games for Team USA.
By adding up the published numbers and doing some arithmetic, we can see:
● NBC averaged 10.26 million a day for its primetime shows;
● USA Network primetime shows averaged 2.17 million;
● NBC said its streaming platforms averaged 3.3 million;
● So, the daytime (live) shows averaged about 7.8 million daily on NBC, USA and CNBC.
This says:
(1) The power of live sports is demonstrated once again as a dominant “audience aggregator” and one of the last ways to bring people together around a television or a computer (or phone).
(2) The terrible ratings for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games and the Beijing 2022 Winter Games were due in part to the pandemic and due in part to being in Asia, a terrible time zone for U.S. viewers. The much-friendlier Central European Time Zone – six hours ahead of U.S. Eastern – creates far more interest in the U.S.
(3) NBC said this was its largest Olympic Winter Games audience since Sochi 2014. Comparing to the other Winter Games this century for the NBC primetime show only:
● 31.9 million 2002: Salt Lake City
● 20.2 million 2006: Turin
● 24.4 million 2010: Vancouver
● 21.3 million 2014: Sochi
● 19.8 million 2018: PyeongChang
● 11.4 million 2022: Beijing
● 10.3 million 2026: Milan Cortina
For 2026, the comparison showing a weak primetime audience in a bit unfair, as it does not include streaming – obviously a big factor now – and that many people watched events live during the day. The Nielsen ratings calculus also more inclusive now than it was in earlier years. But the shared Olympic evening experience on network television is down, substantially, reflecting the general decline in broadcast and cable vs. streaming. Nielsen reported that in January 2026, broadcast and cable accounted for only 42.7% of U.S. television viewing and streaming was 47.0%.
On that basis, the comparison with Sochi is pretty accurate.
One more thing: look at the split of ratings between the first week of the games – nine days from 6-14 February – and the remaining 8 days.
● Week 1 (9 days): 11.41 million NBC; 2.11 million USA
● Week 2 (8 days): 8.95 million NBC; 2.24 million USA
Acknowledging a boost from the NFL Super Bowl being on NBC, the first week still drew more attention – about 27.4% more – than the second week.
That metric will be well received in Monaco, at the headquarters of World Athletics, with track & field held during the first week in Los Angeles in 2028, with swimming now in the second week.
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