Fall In Olympic Ratings Raise Concerns

Rio Olympics has just completed its first week and NBC Network has done a terrific job to bring the live coverage of Olympic Games to the viewers. Unfortunately, the television ratings of the first week is rather disappointing.

Reports suggest that the television rating of Rio 2016 is a lot worse than the 2012 and 2008 Olympic Games. The loss of viewership might create a concern among NBC Network. NBC has dedicated most of their channels to bring the live coverage of Olympic events to the subscribers. Yet, the total perimeter viewers of Rio 2016 are still less than that of 1992 Olympic Games.

However, approximately 29.8 million viewers tuned in to NBC to watch the swimmers Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky winning the medals. In addition to that, both the gymnasts Simone Biles and Aly Raisman qualified to the next round on the same night. Though the viewership is still a lot less than the 2012 Olympic Games held at London, it is gradually building up.

In addition to NBC, both NBCSN and Bravo are the other networks that air the live coverage of Olympic Games. It was reported that almost 34 million subscribers tuned into the NBC Network from 8-11 p.m. to watch the Olympic events on Sunday.

The New Trend

The increased number of live streamers is one of the main reasons for this fall in television ratings. Live streaming applications allow the subscribers to watch their favorite sports events at their convenience, thus enabling subscribers to pay only for the service they want, rather than paying for the entire package.

Interestingly, the number of live streamers and live streaming minutes were apparently less for the preceded Olympic Games. However, the users can now easily access live events through different live streaming applications available to them. Almost 532 million live streaming minutes were recorded for Rio 2016 as per NBC reports.

NBC further claims that Rio Olympics has the best streaming stats and the streaming stats on Sunday was reported to be 24 percent greater than the London Olympic Games. However, the statistics are rumored to change in the upcoming weeks.

NBC has received a 7.8 rating from its subscribers during the first week of Rio 2016. The statistics state that this rating is way less than the London 2012, Beijing 2008, Atlanta 1996, and Barcelona 1992, Olympic Games. However, analysts hope that the television ratings will improve in the upcoming weeks.