Giant men’s basketball number fits with overall impressive Sunday Olympics viewership for NBC

The 2024 Paris Olympics are going very well so far for NBC on a ratings front. NBCUniversal announced Monday that their Sunday coverage (a combination of afternoon and primetime windows across NBC, cable platforms, and Peacock) posted a Total Audience Delivery average of 41.5 million viewers, continuing their strong momentum from Friday and Saturday:

Here’s more from that release, including particularly breakout numbers for men’s basketball (which is not in that average) and women’s soccer clashes:

Beginning with Friday’s Opening Ceremony, NBCUniversal has a posted three-day Total Audience Delivery average of 34.5 million viewers across the combined live Paris Prime (2-5 p.m. ET) and U.S. primetime (8-11 p.m. ET/PT) time periods – up 79% from Tokyo (19.3 million).

A pair of U.S. victories in team sports also delivered audience milestones on Sunday. The U.S. men’s basketball team averaged 10.9 million viewers on NBC and Peacock – a larger audience than for its victory in the Tokyo Olympics gold-medal game (9.3 million) – in winning its opener against Serbia. Later in the day, the U.S. women’s soccer team’s win over Germany topped all men’s and women’s matches in the Tokyo and Rio Olympics, with an average of 4.2 million viewers on USA Network and Peacock.

As Jon Lewis notes at Sports Media Watch, it’s not really possible to do extensive comparisons to past Olympics considering the vastly different broadcast/cable/streaming setups and the differences in measurement (the current setups include Nielsen numbers with full out-of-home viewing tracking and Adobe streaming numbers, both a change from the past). However, the men’s basketball number stands out. And it is worth noting (as Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal did) that this men’s basketball number beat out not just the 2020 gold-medal game (actually played in 2021), but also a lot of sporting events from this year (including a NBA Finals game), which have at least somewhat more analogous measurement than past Olympics:

The biggest question here may be if the men’s basketball numbers can continue to grow for NBC. The U.S. team there next plays Wednesday afternoon against South Sudan.

[NBC Sports Group Pressbox]