The Olympic Opening Ceremony TV Ratings Are In ... And Wow

The ratings for the Paris Olympics’ opening ceremony scored an early victory for NBC and Peacock.

Deadline reported Saturday that nearly 29 million watched Friday’s spectacle on the Seine, according to Nielsen and Adobe Analytics.

The 28.6 million is a huge jump over the 17 million who clicked on to the kickoff of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, which were postponed a year by the pandemic and took place mostly without spectators.

Paris’ opening numbers also bettered the 2016 Rio ceremony by 8%, Deadline noted.

But they fell short of London’s 40.7 million viewers in 2012, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

First-night ratings are usually a harbinger of viewership to come during the games’ actual competitions, The Athletic wrote.

After dismal viewership for the ceremony, the Tokyo Olympics averaged 15.6 million viewers nightly across NBC’s platforms ― an all-time prime-time low for both summer or winter Olympics, The Athletic reported.

The Paris extravaganza generated extra buzz from controversial segments that riled up conservatives, including a bit with drag queens interpreted by many as a parody of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.”