Winter Olympics Deliver Smallest Viewing Audience Ever

This year’s ratings saw a sizable drop from the 2018 Winter Games, along with 2021’s Tokyo Games.

The 2022 Beijing Olympics saw the smallest audience of all time for NBCUniversal, with the Games averaging a reported 11.4 million viewers across all platforms during primetime, per The Hollywood Reporter.

That represents a 42% drop compared to the 2018 Winter Games, and a 26% decrease compared to last year’s Tokyo Olympics. The ratings decline is on par with the general decline of network television ratings over the past four years, and consistent with previous Olympics trends.

The Beijing Games did have the largest or second-largest streaming audience ever, with viewers on Peacock, NBCOlympics.com, the NBC Sports app posting an average primetime viewership of 516,000. U.S. viewers logged 4.3 billion minutes of Olympics coverage over 18 days across all platforms.

Streaming increased by 78% in terms of total minutes compared to the 2018 Olympics, with Peacock seeing its “best stretch” of usage since its nationwide launch 19 months ago.