The NBC Sports division of US network NBC said the London 2012 Olympic Games set a new record as the most-watched multi-day event in US television history, while UK public-service broadcaster the BBC reported that Sunday’s closing ceremony also set a new audience landmark.
NBC Sports, citing data from audience measurement company Nielsen, said that 219.4 million Americans watched the London Olympics on NBCUniversal platforms, surpassing the 215 million who watched the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
NBCUniversal presented its 13th Olympics with an unprecedented 5,535 hours of coverage across NBC, NBC Sports Network, MSNBC, CNBC, Bravo, Telemundo, NBCOlympics.com, two specialty channels and a 3D channel.
The average of 31 million viewers for the closing ceremony was the largest audience for a non-US summer Olympics since Montreal’s staging of the 1976 Games. NBC averaged 31.1 million viewers over 17 nights in primetime, which also represented the most-watched non-US summer Olympics since Montreal 1976.
NBC Sports chairman Mark Lazarus said the huge ratings justified the broadcaster’s decision to showcase taped events in primetime. He added that NBC could have afforded the same treatment to more events, such as the US men’s gold medal basketball game and Andy Murray’s victory over Roger Federer in the men’s tennis finals – both of which were broadcast live.
“It’s undeniable we hurt our ratings by doing that (broadcasting live),” Lazarus told Bloomberg. “We have to balance what we’re trying to do for viewers across the country and our business model.” Having previously predicted a loss of $200 million (€162.4 million) for its coverage of the 2012 Games, Lazarus added that the better-than-expected ratings may help the broadcaster to turn a profit on the event.
Meanwhile, the BBC smashed its own record for coverage of an Olympics closing ceremony with Sunday’s event pulling in more than double the number of viewers than the finale to Barcelona’s 1992 Games. An average UK audience of 22.9 million watched London 2012’s closing ceremony, giving the BBC an 81-per-cent share. Barcelona’s closing ceremony drew 11 million viewers. Viewing of Sunday’s closing ceremony peaked at 26.3 million at 9.35pm.
In Brazil, where the next edition of the summer Games will take place in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, exclusive live coverage of London 2012 on commercial broadcaster Record generated an average rating of 5.1 points, according to audience measurement agency Ibope. Rival commercial broadcasters Globo and SBT registered an average of 13.2 points and 6 points respectively during the Olympics.