London Olympics: 2012 Games Most-Watched TV Event in U.S. History

NBC reached over 219 million viewers, up from the 215 million that watched Beijing

By Tim Baysinger -- Broadcasting & Cable, 8/13/2012 4:54:06 PM

The Games of the XXX Olympiad were the best ever for NBC, as more than 219 million viewers tuned in over the 17 days, making the London Olympics the most-watched TV event in U.S. history, according to Nielsen.

The 219.4 million viewers were up 2% over the 215 million that watched the Beijing Games in 2008. NBC averaged 31.1 million viewers over the two-week event, the most for any non-U.S. Summer Olympics since 1976 (Montreal), beating Beijing by 12% and Athens (2004) by 26%.

Olympic coverage on NBCU's cable networks (Bravo, CNBC, MSNBC, NBC Sports Network) averaged 716,000 average viewers, up 2% and up 34% from Athens. NBC Sports Network had its most-watched event (Team USA defeating Japan in the women's gold medal soccer match) and its six most-watched days ever. NBCU's Spanish-language net Telemundo drew a total cumulative viewership of 19.3 million total viewers, 29% more than Beijing.

Over on the digital side, there were a total of 159.3 million video streams, 110% over Beijing. Of those 159.3 million, 64.4 million were live. Those 159.3 million streams made up 20.4 million hours (13.6 million of them live), which more than doubled Beijing. The NBC Olympics Live Extra and NBC Olympics apps were downloaded over 8 million times. There were 1.9 billion page views across NBCOlympics.com on computer, mobile and tablet, and both apps, 650 million more than Beijing.