LeBron James, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant leading the U.S. men’s basketball team over France in the final game at the Paris Summer Olympics brought NBC and Peacock the biggest ratings for a gold medal game since 1996.
Overall ratings for the Olympics have bounced back from the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Summer Games, reinvigorating the international competition as a premier television event.
The gold medal game averaged 19.5 million viewers on Saturday afternoon and its tight finish peaked at 22.7 million, according to total audience stats cobbled together by from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics.
The game ranked as the most-streamed event of the Paris Olympics across NBCU digital platforms, with an average minute audience of 2.7 million viewers.
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The U.S. men weren’t the only ones drawing big numbers.
On Saturday morning, the U.S. women’s soccer team won gold in with a 1-0 victory over Germany. The contest drew about 9 million viewers on NBC and Peacock. That was the most-watched gold-medal soccer match since the Athens Games in 2004.
Coverage of the Olympics on Saturday across NBC, Peacock and other NBCU platforms drew a Total Audience Delivery of 30.7 million viewers. That compares to 11.7 million viewers for the last Saturday of the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
Since the opening ceremony, NBC has averaged 31.3 million viewers for primetime in Paris and the U.S., up 82% from Tokyo.
