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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.
Honing in on Peacock specifically, data show 28% of Olympic viewers are already subscribed to Peacock while an additional 12% planned to sign up as of August 2. 1Gen Xers are the most likely to have said they’re already subscribers, while Gen Z show the most interest in signing up.
Among those who have already subscribed or plan to subscribe to Peacock to watch the Olympics, 74% have cut the cord on cable and satellite while another 12% are interested in cutting the cord.
Olympics Coverage Could Accentuate Peacock’s Pattern of Growth
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. CivicScience data show 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.
Take Our Poll: Have you subscribed to Peacock in order to stream the Paris Olympic games?
Here’s how Peacock’s Olympic subscribers and intenders over-index compared to non-users:
Who are the consumers subscribing to Peacock to watch the Olympics? CivicScience data of over 500K crossable questions reveal the key ways that subscribers and intenders 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.2
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.
