NBC Olympics saw Saturday’s primetime coverage of the Rio Games notch a Total Audience Delivery of 26.8 million viewers for a markup of 14% over the Total Audience Delivery on the opening Saturday of the Games, and drew a 15.0 household rating. After 9 days, the NBC-only average primetime viewership his hitting 27.9 million viewers and household rating 15.5, off-pace from London, but still dominating the evenings, according to Nielsen fast national data. Highlights of the day included Golf Channel’s afternoon Olympic men’s golf coverage growing viewership 336% among over the same Saturday in 2012. Meanwhile, NBC Olympics on Friday topped 2 billion streaming minutes via NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app, with 1.67 billion being watched live.
The introduction of Total Audience Delivery was a hot topic when Mark Lazarus, Chairman of the NBC Sports Group, and Alan Wurtzel, President of Research & Media Development for NBC Universal spoke with reporters about the state of the coverage. Highlights of the conversation are below…
Lazarus on NBC’s Olympic coverage: We are aggregating audiences at a scale that nobody has ever seen before. To top that, this will be our most economically successful Games in history, and it’s by far the most viewer friendly TV event of all time. In addition, we’re delivering for all of our affiliates, our MVPD partners, as well as all of our advertisers. We spent years preparing for this and our team has worked tirelessly to put us in this position. We’ve been part of a changing media landscape, and NBC and Comcast have been and are leaders in that.
On the halo effect: On NBC, these Olympics have a big halo effect for the rest of our businesses and our company. The Today Show and Nightly News, Access Hollywood, all of which are here in Rio, have shown large increases, especially among young audiences. In the 18 to 34 demo, The Today Show this week is beating the combined total of its competitors, and nightly viewership was up 98% from last week. Access Hollywood has nearly tripled its 18 to 49 viewership versus last month. The Tonight Show, which followed Opening Ceremony, had huge viewership in the 18 to 49 demographic and jumped 72%.
Wurtzel on Total Audience Delivery: Now, what the TAD does is to measure how many viewers have seen Olympic content in prime across three buckets — broadcast television, cable, and our streaming platforms. But what makes this different is that we’ve converted all the digital usage measurement into a Nielsen-like metric. So by harmonizing the data, we have a measure that offers us an average minute measure of viewership. And when we roll these buckets up, we get the most accurate picture of each day’s Olympic consumption, and our primary audience research reflects these changes in consumer behavior. For example, 65% of our viewers say they’re watching the Olympics much differently now than they did several years ago. And almost half are using more screens to follow the games than ever before.
On second screens: Now, it’s only a few days in, but we’ve already seen some really interesting findings. Among people who watched the first three days, 80% used TV and at least one other device to follow the games. And that’s up from 61% in Sochi, which is only two years ago. Not surprisingly, the smartphone is now the device most often used to follow the Olympics on digital platforms by 80%, and that was 70% in Sochi, and 54% of adults 18-plus have used social media simultaneously during the first three days of the Olympics.
On Olympic sponsorship: According to Nielsen’s TV Brand Effect, something that used to be called IAG, for those of you familiar, through the first nights of Rio, first three nights, roughly 60 ads have aired, both in Olympic prime and the identical ads were aired elsewhere in prime. Among 18-49, these ads had a 39% better recall and generated 28% better overall brand resonance inside the Olympics than outside. Interestingly, these common ads have been especially impactful among the elusive millennial, 18-34. With them, the recall was nearly twice as high. 93% lift in Rio versus outside and generated 36% better overall breakthrough, best than London’s 27% when we compare inside the Olympics to outside. And that superior engagement translates to the most important attribute, consumer behavior.
