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The Paris Summer Olympics are now in the final stretch and have so far been highly successful for NBC and its streaming platform, Peacock. This aligns with CivicScience data showing streaming is gaining prominence in how Americans are tuning into the Olympics this year with Peacock in the lead.
The Paris Olympics are far from the first sports coverage for Peacock as the platform looks to build off of the success of its exclusive NFL playoff game coverage last season and a week 1 game of the 2024-25 NFL season in addition to its coverage of English Premier League soccer. The growing emphasis on streaming sports appears to be playing a role in Peacock’s growth. CivicScience data highlight just how much Peacock has grown in usage since it first launched back in July 2020 with 38% now using the platform through the first week of August 2024, up 12 percentage points from its first full year. The Olympics are a likely contributor as 51% of Olympics viewers are Peacock users compared to 38% of the Gen Pop.
Take Our Poll: Have you subscribed to Peacock in order to stream the Paris Olympic games?
Who are the consumers tuning into Peacock to watch the Olympics? CivicScience data of over 500K crossable questions reveal key ways that those who are tuning into the Olympics on Peacock over-index compared to non-users.
Viewers Love “Gold Zone” and Streaming Service Users Want to See More
One of the major draws to Peacock for the Olympics is its “Gold Zone” show, which is similar in nature to the NFL RedZone show. It offers 10 hours of whip-around coverage of all live Olympic events, and even features RedZone’s host Scott Hanson. CivicScience data show a noteworthy 16% of Olympic viewers have already watched Gold Zone, and another 24% plan to tune in to watch it.1
Do consumers who’ve seen Gold Zone think American Sports leagues should lean more heavily into this whip-around style show for coverage of their games? More than 2-in-5 of those familiar with Gold Zone agree that American sports leagues would benefit from embracing this style of show, including 17% who ‘strongly’ agree. More than half of Peacock users agree with this sentiment as well.
Users of other major streaming platforms that feature coverage of American sports leagues also believe in the benefits of a whip-around style show. Among them, ESPN+ and Max users are the most likely to embrace the Gold Zone style coverage. Users of Amazon Prime Video, which is still relatively new to sports coverage compared to its competition, are the least likely of the platforms to believe in the benefits of whip-around sport shows.
The success of Peacock during the Paris Summer Olympics highlights the increasing prominence of streaming in sports viewership. This trend, coupled with the popularity of Peacock’s “Gold Zone” coverage, suggests a promising future for American sports leagues and streaming platforms to adopt and expand similar whip-around broadcasting formats.
Interested in leveraging CivicScience’s data to drive audience engagement and unlock valuable insights for your media initiatives?
- n=1,417 responses from 08/02/2024 to 08/06/2024 ↩︎
