NBCUniversal boasted a weekend of big ratings records, as most Americans found themselves tuning in to the Comcast-owned company’s platforms for Winter Olympics programming, Super Bowl Sunday or even just Bad Bunny’s much-discussed halftime show.
Both events, which made up two thirds of what NBCUniversal dubs “Legendary February,” drove massive ratings wins for NBCUniversal — especially on streaming — including giving Peacock its best performance day ever on Super Bowl Sunday in both reach and hours streamed.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. NBCUniversal’s ratings records started Friday with the opening ceremony for the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, which averaged 21.4 million viewers on NBC and Peacock. The ceremony posted a 34% uptick from the 2022 Beijing Winter Games opener — to be expected given the early 6:30 a.m. ET start time for the Beijing one. It’s also notable that the event gathered an average of 3 million viewers via streaming, as more audiences tuned in using Peacock.
The Olympics’ ratings milestones only started there, with NBCUniversal also reporting on Saturday that the 2026 Games had already reached a streaming audience high for the Winter Olympics with 700 million minutes tallied up through Friday.
The games saw a significant boost on Saturday, which ranked as the most-watched Winter games presentation since day 10 of the 2014 Sochi Olympics with 28.5 million viewers. Saturday’s events averaged 4.1 million streaming viewers, and even reached a record 1.3 billion minutes streaming, marking the first time the Winter Olympics brought in over 1 billion minutes streamed.
Cue: Super Bowl Sunday, one of the biggest TV viewership vehicles in history, which happened to fall into NBCUniversal’s hands this year as part of its rotation. NBCUniversal opted not to utilize one of its FAST channels to stream the game like Fox did with Tubi last year, which only drove viewers to Peacock already in the midst of Olympic fever. That might be one factor that prompted viewership to dip a slight 2% from last year’s all-time record of 127.7 million viewers to reach 124.9 million viewers across NBC, Peacock, Telemundo, NBC Sports Digital and NFL+.
Despite the slight drop in viewership — which extended to Bad Bunny’s halftime show that trailed behind Kendrick Lamar’s record last year with 128.2 million viewers — the Super Bowl can certainly be considered a win for NBCUniversal, ranking as the most-watched show in the company’s history and driving Peacock to its most-watched day to date.
NBCUniversal-owned Telemundo also saw a big lift as both the Super Bowl and the halftime show soared to their highest Spanish-language viewership.
The massive events also boosted adjacent programming, including the post-Super Bowl debut of Keke Palmer-led dramedy “The Burbs,” which NBCUniversal played directly after the game on Peacock while leaving the coveted post-game broadcast slot to more Olympics coverage. The move paid off, with “The Burbs” scoring the biggest premiere day for a Peacock original ever. Additionally, Friday’s post-Olympics airing of “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” scored the show’s most-watched episode since the 2024 Thanksgiving post-NFL airing with 2.4 million viewers.
Since the weekend, the Olympics have continued to make noise for NBC, with the games averaging 26.5 million viewers through Tuesday night, ranking as the most-watched Winter Games presentation at this point since the 2014 Sochi Olympics. The streaming count hit 5.3 billion minutes through Tuesday, marking a 36% uptick from the 3.9 billion minutes tallied up by the 2022 Olympics.
With the Olympics continuing through Feb. 22 and the NBA All-Star weekend coming up to round out NBCU’s “Legendary February” programming, we’re sure more ratings and streaming records are forthcoming.
Guthrie disappearance drives “Today” viewership
Another development bringing eyes to NBCUniversal has been the ongoing disappearance of Savannah Guthrie’s mother, Nancy, who has been missing since Jan. 31. During the week of Feb. 2, “Today” averaged nearly 3.3 million viewers — a 23% uptick from last year — and outpaced the 2.9 viewers averaged by ABC’s “GMA” and 1.8 million for “CBS Mornings.”
The viewership gains did not translate to the 25-54 demo, with “Today” seeing a 4% year-over-year dip with 648,000 viewers, but still beating “GMA’s” viewership of 495,000 and “CBS Mornings’s” 254,000 viewers.
“CBS Evening News” grows, but doesn’t dominate
Elsewhere in the broadcast news space, “CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil” gained ground, with the show averaging 4.6 million viewers and 579,000 demo viewers during the week of Jan. 2. That’s up 10% in total viewers and 9% in the demo compared to the week of launch.
The gains weren’t enough to outpace ABC’s “World News Tonight,” which averaged 9 million viewers during the same week. “World News Tonight” also outpaced “CBS Evening News” by 99% in demo viewers aged 25-54.
A historic rivalry scores fresh record
The rivalry basketball game between Duke and UNC became ESPN’s most-watched men’s basketball game in four years with an average of 3.5 million viewers. Viewership for the game, which peaked with 4.8 million viewers, marked a 53% uptick from the first matchup in of the season.
ICYMI
- Super Bowl companion the Puppy Bowl also scored its biggest audience in eight years.
- “Bridgerton” Season 4 kept dominating Netflix’s most-watched TV list in its second week since premiering Part 1.
- HBO Max phenomenon “Heated Rivalry” doubled its viewership after its finale, surpassing 10.6 million viewers in the U.S. to date.
- YouTube and the Super Bowl’s second annual creator-led football game scored 14 million views.
The post NBC’s Big Weekend: How Super Bowl and Winter Olympics Drove Record-Breaking Ratings appeared first on TheWrap.
