Milan Cortina Olympics Deliver Most-Watched Winter Games Since 2014 Across NBCUniversal Platforms
Milan Cortina Olympics Deliver Most-Watched Winter Games Since 2014 Across NBCUniversal Platforms
It appears NBCUniversal gets the gold for its presentation of the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan Cortina, which were the most-watched Winter Games in more than a decade.
From the opening through closing ceremonies, this year’s games averaged 23.5 million viewers on NBC, Peacock, NBCUniversal Digital Platforms and Versant’s CNBC and USA Network across the combined live afternoon Milan Prime window (2-5 p.m. ET) and U.S. primetime (8-11 p.m. ET/PT) time periods, according to the company.
That’s based on official Nielsen Big Data + Panel viewership through February 19 and preliminary data from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics through Sunday. Final data is expected later this week, at which point this post will be updated to include the new average, as well as the final viewership figure for the Closing Ceremony.
The company did say it managed the best average audience for a Winter Games since Sochi 2014 and up 96% from the 2022 Beijing Olympics, which averaged 12M in the same combined windows.
NBCUniversal adds that there were 16.7 billion minutes of Milan Cortina Olympics coverage streamed across digital platforms, led by Peacock. The company touts that’s more than double all prior Winter Olympics combined (at 6.9B), though it’s worth noting that this is only the second Winter Games since Peacock’s inception. This time around, Peacock streamed more than 850 live events over a 17-day period.
The overall win comes just days after the United States Women’s and Men’s Hockey Teams both defeated Canada in overtime to secure Olympic gold medals. Thursday’s game was the most-watched women’s hockey game on record, averaging 5.3M viewers across USA Network and Peacock, NBCU says. The audience peaked in overtime with 7.7M.
Viewership figures for the men’s game are not available quite yet. In Sunday’s final medal event of the Milan Cortina Olympics, Team USA won its first gold medal in men’s hockey since 1980 in Lake Placid. NBCU says that those numbers will be out Tuesday.
NBCUniversal’s presentation of the Milan Cortina Olympics spanned 3,200 hours of coverage across 116 events. Team USA won 12 gold medals, its most-ever at a Winter Games, and ranked second in the overall medal count with 33.
