The time has not yet come to take stock of the Olympic Games for the Paris 2024 COJO, which is fully engaged in the organization of the Paralympic event. The " return match ", to use the organizers' expression. But at the IOC, the time has already come to compile the audience figures recorded all over the world between July 26 and August 11. They are impressive.
Aditya Aditya, the IOC’s head of media business strategy and intelligence, has gathered some of the results reported by the major Olympic broadcasters. They are not all final and will be refined in the coming weeks. But they are enough to position Paris 2024 as the number one media event on the planet, of any genre.
France, first. According to the analyses of France Télévisions, the host broadcaster, the Paris 2024 Olympic Games have achieved results never before approached. Nearly 60 million French people followed the event. In the 15-24 age group and among working men and women, the follow-up rate is announced at… 99%. On average, this part of the population watched 24 hours of retransmission. The digital platform france.tv accumulated more than 200 million videos viewed over the entire event. Finally, the various social networks of the public audiovisual group recorded 1 billion videos viewed for excerpts from the sporting events and ceremonies.
In the United States, the NBCUniversal group has not regretted its investment. It crushed the competition during the Olympic Games period with 30,6 million viewers, up 82% compared to the Tokyo 2020 Games. Streaming literally exploded, with 23,5 billion minutes viewed on the Peacock network. Finally, Paris 2024 allowed the channel NBC to extend its streak of 152 consecutive Summer Olympic nights leading the national primetime audiences.
In Canada, 7 out of 10 people followed the Paris 2024 Games on CBC/Radio-Canada, or approximately 27 million Canadians. The audiovisual group's digital platforms recorded 24,3 million hours of viewing, up 170% from the Tokyo 2020 Games and 121% from the Beijing 2022 Winter Games. CBC was the most-watched channel among 25-54 year-olds throughout the Games.
Warner Bros. Discovery, the European pay-TV rights holder, recorded an audience of over 215 million viewers across the continent, 40 million more than for Tokyo 2020 (+23%). Over 7 billion minutes were streamed during the Games, six times more than at Tokyo 2020.
In the UK, the Olympics were watched for at least 15 minutes by 36,1 million viewers on BBC, or nearly 6 in 10 Britons. In Germany, the coverage offered by ARD et ZDF reached 53,4 million viewers, or about two-thirds of the population. The opening ceremony on Friday, July 26, was the most watched in Germany for more than twenty years on the channel Das Erste (ARD), with a 45,5 percent market share. The ARD-ZDF digital platforms recorded 225 million visits up to the last Saturday of the Games, or 65 million hours.
In Australia, 19,5 million people watched the Paris 2024 Games on Channel 9, 9Gem et 9NowThe Olympic Games have allowed 9News to record its ten best audiences of the year.
Finally, the Paris 2024 Games achieved a spectacular breakthrough in India, where 170 million viewers followed the event on the Viacom18 group's platforms. The audiovisual network recorded more than 15 billion minutes of the Games viewed. Thanks to these results, it multiplied its advertising revenue by 2,6 compared to the Tokyo 2020 Games.
