Virtual Gold: New Olympic Streaming Records Set in the US and Europe

Sports fans may not tune into “Olympic” sports such as fencing, swimming, and rowing on a regular basis, but they have certainly shown up for the Paris Olympic Games, particularly via streaming.

NBCUniversal, which holds the US streaming rights for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, reported that it had streamed over 1 billion minutes through Friday, July 26th via its Peacock streaming service. That figure included Friday’s opening ceremony as well as full, live coverage of events such as soccer and rugby that occurred in the days prior. The company claimed that it had reached just under 4.5 billion streaming minutes through Sunday, July 28th. The first billion represented a 6x increase through the same period for the Tokyo Olympic Games (perhaps not surprising given lower penetration for Peacock at that time and the time delay between Japan and the US time zones for live events). Advertisers are also noting a boost. An NBCUniversal noted a 320% increase in “search volume” for those brands advertising in Opening Ceremony as compared to the Tokyo Olympics.

Warner Bros. Discovery, which holds European streaming rights, reported just under 1 billion streaming minutes through Sunday across its European Max and discovery+ platforms. Though Max was only recently launched in Europe, in May 2024, the service represented 80% of the streaming audience. Discovery+ has been a streaming presence in Europe since January 2021, where it absorbed the already existing Dplay and Eurosport Player streaming services.

So What?

While a Europe-centric Olympics is more convenient for viewing live competition for Western viewers, the huge increase in viewership still speaks to the evolution of the industry. Successful delivery and monetization of live events at massive global scale – with high resolutions, low latency, and a strong user experience – has been a technical challenge for the industry for several years. For streaming platforms and their vendors to pull it off successfully is no small feat.

The differences higher volume of US streaming viewership compared to that of Europe reveals the deep penetration that streaming has achieved in the US and the potential for growth that still exists in Europe (and much of the rest of the world).

Perhaps more importantly, consumers worldwide increasingly see streaming as a leading sports-viewing option. While the numbers haven’t yet been sliced and diced by analytics, many of those billion minutes and millions of viewers likely skew young. We should expect an even greater increase when the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles roll around, along with ample coverage via short form video streaming (facilitated by AI-curated clips).

It should translate into massive viewing, a win for fans, and more gold for advertisers and distributors.