Over 31-Million Viewers for the First Monday of the 2016 Rio Olympics

NBC is reporting an 18.1 household rating and 31.5 million viewers for primetime coverage of the 2016 Rio Olympics on Monday, August 8. These results are based on NBC Olympics’ new Total Audience Delivery report – which measures broader Rio Olympics consumption by calculating average minute viewing across broadcast, cable and digital. Comparably, the opening Monday night of the 2012 London Olympics – which had no simultaneous live streaming and no competing primetime Olympic cable coverage – posted an 18.0 national rating with an average of 31.6 million viewers.

“One of the indicators of changing viewer habits, especially with these Olympics, is that our digital consumption has more than tripled from London in each of the first three days of full competition,” said NBC Sports Group chairman Mark Lazarus. “We’ve also been pleasantly surprised that our multi-platform strategy is paying big dividends.”

After four days, the NBC-only average primetime viewership (27.3 million viewers) and household rating (14.8) are up over ABC, CBS and Fox combined by 285 percent and 202 percent, respectively. Comparably, this is the second-largest Summer Games advantage on record (behind only the London Olympics), according to national data from Nielsen.

Among Adults 18-49, NBC’s four-night 8.0 primetime rating in the demographic tops the other broadcast networks combined (1.4 on ABC, CBS and FOX) by 471 percent – the largest advantage in the first four days of any Olympics.