The Olympic Opening Ceremony TV Ratings Are In… And Wow

The ratings for the Paris Olympics’ opening ceremony scored an early victory for NBC and Peacock.

Deadline reported Saturday that nearly 29 million people watched Friday’s spectacle on the Seine River, according to Nielsen and Adobe Analytics.

The 28.6 million is a huge jump over the 17 million who watched the kickoff of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, which were postponed a year by the pandemic and took place mostly without spectators.

Paris’ opening numbers also bettered the 2016 Rio ceremony by 8%, Deadline noted.

First-night ratings are usually a harbinger of viewership to come during the Games’ actual competitions, The Athletic noted, highlighting how, after dismal viewership for its ceremony, the Tokyo Olympics averaged 15.6 million viewers nightly across NBC’s platforms — an all-time primetime low for both the Summer and Winter Olympics.