Peacock sees record Winter Olympics streaming viewership in early ratings

The Milan Cortina Winter Olympics are off to a strong start for NBCUniversal.

The company announced that the Opening Ceremony on Feb. 6 averaged 21.4 million viewers on NBC and Peacock, a 34% increase from the 2022 Winter Games, according to preliminary ratings from Nielsen.

Final Nielsen Big Data + Panel numbers will be released on Tuesday.

The Opening Ceremony was watched by 3 million viewers on Peacock, making it the most-streamed for the Winter Games yet. Across Peacock and NBCU’s digital platforms through Friday, viewership was 2.5 times greater than the 2022 games.

The Olympics weren’t the only major sporting event airing on NBC and streaming on Peacock over the weekend: the Super Bowl aired on Sunday and is expected to break viewership records — again. Last year’s Big Game on Fox and Tubi was the most-watched TV broadcast in the U.S. of all time with over 127 million viewers, but experts expect the ratings to be even bigger this year.

There are already signs that the broadcast was big: Bad Bunny, the Halftime Show performer, is seeing a significant boost in listenership. Apple said that streams on Apple Music for the musician grew 7 times after the show. On Spotify, the top six songs in the U.S. on Monday were from the artist, as were the top three globally.

Peacock has been positioning itself as a sports destination for cord cutters, streaming the NFL, NBA, Premier League and more. Starting this year, the MLB will return to NBC and stream on Peacock.

Peacock now has 44 million subscribers, up from the 9 million paid members and the roughly 20 million monthly active users it had at the end of 2021, ahead of the previous Winter Games.