The Beijing Winter Olympics averaged just 11.4 million primetime viewers over the course of the Games, its lowest average since NBC took over as the exclusive broadcast network of the Summer Games in 1988 and the Winter Games in 2002.
Pyeongchang in 2018 — the last Winter Olympics prior to Beijing — had already shown a steep decline in viewership from previous broadcasts, averaging 19.8 million viewers. Beijing represented a precipitous fall from that low.
A number of factors may have played into the decline, including human-rights concerns. Many political figures and commentators compared the Games to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, pointing to the ongoing genocide being carried out against China’s Muslim Uyghur population. The United States implemented a diplomatic boycott of the event in protest.
The pandemic is also being blamed for the lackluster ratings. NBC Sports chairman Pete Bevacqua highlighted role of masking, few if any spectators, and other “very harsh protocols” enforced by the Chinese government in comments to the Wall Street Journal. Bevacqua also pointed to the logistical difficulties faced by NBC; as a consequence of the pandemic, many announcers and other staff performed their duties from studios in the United States. This forced them to contend with a huge time difference, as well as a feeling of physical as well as emotional distance from the event.
The 2020 Tokyo Games, postponed until 2021 due to the pandemic, hauled in just 15.5 million viewers in primetime, providing yet another troubling data point for NBC, which holds the broadcast rights through 2032.