NBCUniversal will always have its eye on Paris – the setting for a huge boost to its Summer Olympics efforts.

The company says the 2024 Olympic Games, which concluded Sunday with a ceremony at the Stade de France and a handover to the next Summer Games in Los Angeles, averaged 30.6 million viewers across platforms for the daytime broadcast “Paris Prime” (2-5 p.m. ET in the U.S.) and evening primetime shows. That’s a huge improvement — 82 percent — from the last Summer Olympics three years ago in Tokyo, which averaged 16.9 million viewers across platforms for the daytime and primetime broadcasts.

The Tokyo Games were held in largely empty stadiums due to COVID lockdowns, in a city where the time difference with the U.S. is much greater than in Paris. NBCU also significantly expanded its streaming presence on Peacock and other digital platforms this year, resulting in widely praised live coverage of every sport and medal event.

The 2024 Olympics’ viewership also compares favorably to 2016 (26 million viewers) and 2012 (30.3 million), although streaming played a much, much smaller role in those games. They also aired at a time before Nielsen included out-of-home viewership in its daily numbers.

The Paris Olympics set a streaming record (dating back to 2008, when NBCU first offered live streams of Olympic events) with 23.5 billion minutes of viewing on Peacock and the company’s other digital channels. That’s 40 percent more than the 16.8 billion minutes total of all previous Olympics (summer and winter) in the streaming era. If the Paris Games were considered a streaming series, it would likely be among the top five titles of 2024, according to Nielsen’s streaming metrics.

During the 17-day run of the Games, NBCU averaged 4.1 million streaming viewers per day, mostly on Peacock (the company also had two digital “Paris Extra” channels). NBCU also says that one in five Olympic viewers spent time on Gold Zone, the hub that often showed multiple events at once and showed nearly every moment where the gold medal was at stake.

Telemundo’s Olympic ratings also increased, with Spanish-language broadcasts improving by 26 percent compared to the Tokyo Games.

“This Olympic Games has captivated Americans in droves across all NBCUniversal platforms,” ​​said Rick Cordella, president of NBC Sports, in a statement. “Led by our world-class technical and production teams in Paris and Stamford, more than 3,000 employees worked tirelessly to present these reimagined Games in new and innovative ways, at all times of the day and on all platforms. We are thrilled that Americans have embraced and enjoyed the Olympic Games in Paris as much as we have.”

Mark Lazarus, Chairman of NBCUniversal Media Group, added: “We sold more advertising for the Paris Olympics than any other Games, and we delivered for all of our partners. Parks and studios received unprecedented advertising as the ‘halo effect’ boosted all of our business. The Paris Olympics were as exciting as we hoped they would be, and we can’t wait to work with our partners at the IOC and USOPC in Milan-Cortina in 2026 and 2028.”

Last weekend’s men’s basketball gold medal game between the United States and France averaged 19.5 million viewers on NBC and Peacock – more than double the number of viewers for the final (between the same two countries) in Tokyo. It was also the most-watched basketball gold medal contest since 1996.

The Olympic sky also extended to NBC News, with both Today And NBC Evening News They defeated the network competition throughout the games (until August 8). Today reached an average of 3.1 million viewers during this time and Night to 7.64 million viewers – compared to 2.52 million and 5.73 million respectively in the four weeks before the start of the Games.