NBC Sees First Drop In 2020 Olympics Viewership Since Opening Ceremony, Continues To Rule Primetime

NBC’s clutch on primetime remains steady with the coverage of the 2020 Olympics, but the network took its first, though minor, hit in viewers Monday night.

Monday’s primetime sporting events, which the the U.S vs. China Women’s Volleyball match, the finals for Men’s 200 meter Freestyle and Women’s 100 meter backstroke, aired to an average of 14.9 million viewers and gained a 3.5 in the 18-49 demo in overnight ratings. Monday’s overnight numbers saw a 12% drop in viewers from Sunday (4.1, 17.0M) .

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Despite the dip, the 2020 Olympics continues to prove successful for NBC, which revealed that viewers have already streamed more than one billion minutes of Olympics content across NBCOlympics.com, NBC Sports app & Peacock. NBC said it this year marked the quickest accomplishment of the viewing milestone.

NBC also shared that, per Total Audience Delivery viewership, the Tokyo Olympics put on three of 15 most-watched primetime nights in 2021, with each being the first nights of competition.

Behind NBC’s Tokyo Olympics coverage, the latest episode of ABC’s The Bachelorette returned to 3.59M viewers and a 0.8 rating in its two-hour time slot. Celebrity Dating Game (0.3, 1.60M) closed off ABC’s night.

FOX and CBS’ Monday evening consisted of reruns. The CW saw the Season 3 premiere of Roswell New Mexico, which took in a 0.1 rating and aired to .613M viewers. Republic of Sarah (0.0, .285M) followed.

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