2026 Winter Olympics had 96% increase in viewership over 2022 Games, NBC says
· Yahoo Sports
It's looking like NBC won gold with their coverage of this year's Winter Olympics.
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The network averaged 23.5 million viewers throughout the two-plus week competition across all platforms, it announced in a press release on Feb. 23. The final numbers are still coming in but if they hold, that would make Milano Cortina the most-viewed Winter Games since 2014 in Sochi, and a 96% increase in viewership from 2022.
NBCUniversal's figures come from Nielsen Big Data + Panel reach metrics through Feb. 19 and preliminary Nielsen and Adobe Analytics over final three days of competition. Final data will be available later in the week.
"The Milan Cortina Olympics proved once again that the American audience will gather in large numbers over 17 days to experience this unmatched global competition," NBC Olympics president Gary Zenkel said in a statement. "These Winter Games — superbly hosted across northern Italy, and produced and distributed by a team of 2,700 — reached blockbuster U.S. audiences of more than 50 million viewers each day, continuing the media dominance we experienced less than two years ago at the Paris Olympics.
According to the network, the opening ceremony on Feb. 2 itself was the most watched in 12 years. All 15 competition days reached over 20 million viewers, and the total audience delivery (TAD) -- a metric used to measure a total number of viewers across all platforms -- of both the live U.S. daytime broadcast, "Milan Prime" and primetime broadcast, "Primetime in Milan" posted 3.3 million total viewers across Peacock and NBCU Digital platforms.
Front Office Sports attributed possible reasons for the dramatic spike in viewership to multiple factors: a favorable time difference of six hours between the U.S. East Coast and Italy (and nine hours from the West Coast) compared to China and Russia, a refined programming strategy, strong storytelling-driven production and a historically successful performance from Team USA.
Milwaukee was the market with the highest ratings share throughout the Olympics. Minneapolis, Fort Myers (Florida), Pittsburgh and Dayton (Ohio) rounded out the top five.
"We can’t wait for the return of the Olympics to the United States with the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028 and are ecstatic to be the U.S. media home of five Olympic Games over the next decade,” NBC wrote in its release.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Milano Cortina most viewed Winter Olympics since 2014