Ratings roundup: Winter Olympics deliver streaming records for NBC and WBD

The 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics continued the broadcast resurgence witnessed at the Summer Games in Paris two years ago, generating streaming records for NBC and Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) two biggest media partners.

NBC averaged a combined 23.5 million viewers on its flagship linear network, Peacock streaming service and on Versant’s cable networks across its afternoon and primetime broadcast windows. Due to time zone differences, the former featured live action from evening events such as ice hockey and figure skating in Italy, while the latter offered a curated, storytelling-focused recap of the days’ action.

Viewership was the highest for a Winter Olympics since Sochi 2014 and was nearly double that of Beijing 2022, which averaged 12 million.

All 15 days of the Games were watched by more than 20 million viewers, with streaming coverage on Peacock and NBC’s other digital platforms registering a total audience delivery (TAD) of 3.3 million viewers. A record total of 16.7 billion minutes of action were streamed, more than double of all prior Winter Olympics combined. Meanwhile, Olympic content on NBC Sport social channels generated 4.28 billion impressions – a 437 per cent increase on Beijing. 

Closer to Milan, WBD’s pan-European coverage delivered a 234 per cent increase in streaming viewership from Beijing on its HBO Max and Discovery+ streaming platforms. Total viewing hours were double those two years ago, with triple digit growth witnessed on HBO Max in France, Germany and Italy and on Discovery+ in the UK.

The total of streaming subscribers who watched Olympic content was higher in Milan-Cortina than in Beijing after just three days of competition, while WBD’s social media accounts earned more than four billion views. Linear viewership on Eurosport and TNT Sports was up three per cent from four years ago, with viewing hours up by half. 

Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics delivers viewership records for European FTA networks

Milan-Cortina was the first Games to be covered by a new six-year joint European broadcast deal between WBD and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and the IOC that ensured public service broadcaster (PSB) were direct partners rather than sub licensees. 

In the UK, the BBC accumulated a total of 26.3 million TV viewers for its coverage, peaking at 5.5 million on the 21st February for the men’s curling gold medal match between Great Britain and Canada. The Beeb also generated a record 83 million streams and more than 44 million total streamed hours across BBC iPlayer and the BBC Sport website and app. This represents a signficant digital uplift from Beijing, where the BBC attracted 31.4 million streams and 26 million viewers on television. 

On YouTube, the BBC’s total views were up 390 per cent from two years ago, reaching 8.8 million, with a total watch time of 590,000 hours. Social contennt received 235 million views, while the BBC’s digital platforms attracted 16.3 million unique visitors. 

Italian state broadcaster Rai enjoyed the most-watched Winter Olympics in its history, with two thirds of the population watching its coverage. It averaged 6.23 million viewers for the closing ceremony and achieved 29 million streams across the two weeks. France Télévisions, which will be the next home broadcaster for the next Winter Olympics in the French Alps in 2030 recorded total viewership of 50 million, while 39.9 million people watched the Games on ARD and ZDF in Germany. 

The roundup:

• The National Basketball Association (NBA) All-Star Game averaged 8.8 million viewers on NBC, Peacock and Telemundo. Viewership peaked at 9.8 million and was up 87 per cent on the previous year.
• TNT Sports averaged 876,000 viewers for its coverage of Brighton’s FA Cup third-round win over Manchester United in January, which was a higher viewing figure than any Premier League match it has shown this season.
• A record 14.7 billion minutes wwere consumed of the opening day of cricket’s Twenty20 (T20) World Cup on JioHotstar and the Star Sports Network, the most minutes ever for an opening day of an International Cricket Council (ICC) event.
• Nascar’s season-opening Daytona 500 race delivered an average of 7.49 million viewers on Fox.
• League One Volleyball (LOVB) is averaging 145,000 viewers for its Wednesday ‘Game of the Week’ broadcast on USA Network, which is a 55 per cent increase on its full-season average last year, according to Sports Business Journal (SBJ).
• The TGL is averaging 508,000 viewers across ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 for its first eight matches, down on the 643,000 it averaged this time last year, according to SBJ.

Credit: https://www.sportspro.com/news/broadcast-ott/winter-olympics-milan-cortina-2026-nbcu-wbd-bbc-streaming-viewership-february-2026/?utm_campaign=36834940-SportsPro%20Daily%3A%20February&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8E5oFvO4l3a_E7xy8SnhHHS4qayPwJsP_CKqABjwot8DZOH0bRLjEm-2PNwlpQ5l8anZBJi6zT7wROit9-bufGVYkDh1Aeuq8uQfAnm9CtUAFKTmM&_hsmi=405333037&utm_content=405330425&utm_source=hs_email