If you’ve uprooted your daily life to watch the Paris 2024 Olympics, you’re not alone. During a press call for the event, NBCUniversal executives revealed that the international competition has been disrupting the American workday.
“From the viewership figures, American is captivated. There’s a lack of productivity in a lot of workplaces, and we’re here for it. We set this goal very early on to make sure that America is unproductive all day long,” Molly Solomon, president and executive producer for NBC Olympics Production, said on a Thursday morning press call. And Solomon came with receipts.
“We did some research on our viewership,” Solomon said. “One in four said their work productivity declines during the Olympics. Two out of three people say that the Olympics provide an escape. And half said they’re changing their daily routines to watch the Olympics.”
The numbers around the Olympics this year back up these unproductive polling figures. So far, Paris 2024 has accumulated more than 8 billion streaming minutes. That’s based off of six days of the Olympics and only five days of actual competition from the 19-day event. On Tuesday, NBC reported that streaming for this Olympics had already surpassed the combined streaming viewership for Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022.
This impressive viewership is a trend in both streaming and primetime. “People want to want to live, and they’re doing it in big numbers,” Rick Cordella, president of NBC Sports, said during the same press conference. “Though Tuesday night — and this is based on NBC only — [the Paris 2024 Olympics] has been the No. 1 show for 142 consecutive Summer Olympics nights.”
Cordella also revealed that “approximately two-thirds” of this viewership on broadcast occurs during primetime, even though the live events have already concluded during the day.
“Peacock has been a huge part of that viewership,” Cordella said. “On competition days, we’re regularly hitting 5 million streaming viewers. And they are coming for everything from live events to live shows, like ‘GoldZone,’ and more.”
The exec also revealed the NBCU team has been “pleasantly surprised” viewership has been so high, especially on weekdays. He pointed to people working from home as well as the summer months as possible reasons for the high daytime viewership during the week.
Just as Katie Ledecky laps her competition, Paris 2024 has been lapping Tokyo 2020. Tuesday’s events, which included Team USA victories in gymnastics, swimming, water polo and football (soccer), scored 34.7 million viewers across NBC, Peacock other NBCUniversal platforms. That’s an 88% increase compared to 2021, the year the COVID-impacted Tokyo 2020 actually took place. The opening ceremony for this year’s games last Friday also saw 60% more viewers when compared to the opening for the Tokyo Games.
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