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The 2026 Winter Olympics remains on a torrid viewership pace for U.S. rights holder NBC, with potential for a bigger boost in the competition’s final days.
NBC said it is averaging 23.9 million viewers through Wednesday for its Olympic coverage across the eponymous broadcast network, Peacock, other NBCUniversal digital platforms, and Versant’s CNBC and USA Network. That’s up 90% from the comparable stretch during the 2022 Beijing Olympics, the most-watched Winter Games since Sochi in 2014, and a continuation of the audience surge seen in the opening days of the competition from Italy.
Wednesday’s competition, which included a gold-medal run by skier Mikaela Shiffrin in the women’s slalom and quarterfinal win by the U.S. men’s ice hockey team, was the 13th straight day that the network’s coverage topped 20 million viewers. In the afternoon that day, the hockey game averaged 6.9 million viewers, representing the most-watched Olympic men’s hockey broadcast since the 2010 gold medal game between the U.S. and Canada.
Led by Peacock, a record 12.9 billion minutes of Olympics content from Milan has been streamed, up by 87% from the streaming of all prior Winter Games combined.
As has been the case throughout the Games, there are several key factors helping explain the substantial viewership increase. Among them:
- A favorable time difference from the U.S. Milan is six hours ahead of the U.S. East Coast, and nine hours ahead of the U.S. West Coast. That more than halves the spread from the 2022 and 2018 Winter Olympics, which were 13 hours and 14 hours ahead of the U.S. East Coast, respectively, and made it much more difficult for American viewers to watch live competition.
- A refined programming strategy that emphasizes live coverage of every sport across numerous linear and streaming platforms throughout each day, culminating in a well-produced, storytelling-driven nightly program in primetime. That same approach was deployed for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, driving an 82% viewership increase.
- Strong production that has included the well-received use of drone cameras throughout the coverage.
- The successful performance of Team USA. As of Friday morning, the U.S. has nine gold medals, tied for second, and 27 medals overall, also second behind Norway. Both counts are challenging all-time highs for the U.S. in the Winter Olympics, set in 2002 in Salt Lake City and 2010 in Vancouver.
- Enhanced methodologies by Nielsen to measure viewing audiences, including the Big Data + Panel process and expanded counting of out-of-home consumption.
What’s Next
There are more viewership boosts likely to come for NBC before Sunday’s closing ceremonies. The latest figures do not include the dramatic overtime victory on Thursday by the U.S. women’s ice hockey team over Canada, which revived that sport’s greatest rivalry.
Similarly, the final days of the Winter Olympics will include the semifinals and final of the men’s hockey competition, along with the conclusion of other high-profile sports such as curling and bobsleigh. Should that U.S.–Canada matchup happen on the men’s ice hockey side, too, a particularly massive audience will be there for the gold-medal game on Sunday, set for 8:10 a.m. ET.
