Good news/Bad news about the Olympics. Ratings in the US were way down, but NBC still made money

Heres my guess for 2 contributing factors

1. No Bolt

2. Americans underperformed

No fans in the venues. That looked bad on TV and no roaring crowd made for dull viewing.

The rest of the world is catching up in some sports that the USA once dominated. Americans typically tune out if victory isn't assured.

OozmaKappa wrote:

Heres my guess for 2 contributing factors

1. No Bolt

2. Americans underperformed

3. Streaming Services (NetFlix, Amazon, etc) competing for viewers

Monkeys Skyping wrote:

OozmaKappa wrote:

Heres my guess for 2 contributing factors

1. No Bolt

2. Americans underperformed

3. Streaming Services (NetFlix, Amazon, etc) competing for viewers

4. People don't actually care about the Olympics, it's entertainment like anything else.

I hope it continues to go down until we have something reasonable like one single Olympic location and that any event where judges decides who wins (exclusively) are taken out.

I enjoyed these Olympics more than any other. hopefully there is enough interest for them to maintain meaning for many years to come!

Only the Olympics make gobs of money. The rest of the meets, and roads are 3rd Rate community cable shows, It doesn't make sense to spend $50 Billion every 4 years to build new Olympic stadiums, They should have one warm weather all year around city location and have the Summer Games constantly every year, and every month, Winter Outdoor Track, Spring Cross Country, Summer Outdoor Track, Half, Marathon, Ekiden, etc. all in the same city with the same Olympic Village. Then take the $50 Billion and pay Olympic Medalists prize money and Olympians appearance fees.

Well, get ready for China to host forever. They'll just call it The People's Games. The rest of you can just $uck it! Unless you have bowed to their political and economic will like certain US politicians named "The Big Guy" and his puppet masters.

I cant imagine most Americans give two turds about the Olympics right now, especially in China.

Americans are in the process of slowly figuring out that they cant have freedom and equality at the same time. So, while they are witnessing the dissapearance of personal liberties and freedoms at the hands of America hating Sleepy Joe, no, they dont feel real patriotic at the moment. And im pretty certain hauling in illegals by the bus/plane load and dropping them off strategically for future illegal votes isnt going to change the Olympic mood around here much either.

Start working on your Mandarin. You were meant to be ruled.

We all complained about it. That peacock interface sucked. No OJ. No Costas. No Gumbel. No heavy hitter sports commentators. No Biles. No Phelps. No Bolt. Empty stands. Confusing timetable. 35 different platforms to stream from. It sucked.

Monkeys Skyping wrote:

OozmaKappa wrote:

Heres my guess for 2 contributing factors

1. No Bolt

2. Americans underperformed

3. Streaming Services (, Amazon, etc) competing for viewers

I 100% think it's that. TV viewership in general for everything is down as there are so many more niches out there.

I stopped caring about the Olympics. The best thing for T&F is for the Olympics to go away. Real sports don't rely on the Olympics for their showcase events. The Stanley Cup, Super Bowl, World Cup, World series, none of them care about the Olympics other than a few countries with hockey.

If T&F wants to get to the actual big leagues they need to look at how those sports monetize and do the same. The Diamond League final should have viewership like the Super Bowl.

If T&F wants to get to the actual big leagues they need to look at how those sports monetize and do the same. The Diamond League final should have viewership like the Super Bowl.[/quote]

You need to transport yourself back to late 50's - early 70's. That era is over and wont come back here. Why not just emjoy it for what it is and with others that genuinely like it. The market doesnt demand multimillion dollar contracts that fill seats and sell jerseys and beer.

If they did, they would have a larming lot outside Hayward Field for tailgaiting and live music. 2016 trials tried and I thought it was ok but not even close to a typical fall saturday at a college fb game. And Im ok with that too.

Does this consider streaming viewership? There is no need to tune into prime time coverage when you can watch the sports you want in full online.

I feel bad for most pro runners. There get so serious about a meet in the US AND and there is like 10 people in attendance..

That’s gotta suck and feel really goofy

Pretty good considering the Olympics were during the middle of the fuggin night and early morning here.

Wait to the Winter Olympics are over. The ratings will be abysmal.

I am surprised that anybody is surprised.

1. Who is watching TV these days maybe your granddad but that's about it.

2. Olympics? Who cares? Probably not too many.

3. Track&Field? Surely there are some fans here on LRC but who many of these are around. 5,000, 10,000?

The funny thing is that they now measure who watched ANY of the Olympic coverage. That means if you watched 5 minutes while you where in your hotel room somewhere you are an Olympic viewer. What a joke.

Unfortunately the genie is out of the bottle. It would be great for running if it reverted to pre-boom years, but not gonna happen. In the UK in the late '70's, running was fantastic for both participants and watchers, and there was a tiny fraction of todays money thrown at it. Snappy (carefully limited event) evening and weekend primetime coverage of Euro meets. Regular winter made-for-TV Saturday XC races with 'team' races (like North/South/East/West - so you could root for your area) supported by well-known top runners. And this was even before the Covett hoopla. Point is, running as a sport does NOT benefit from big money, unlike most sports. Quite the opposite. No-one benefits from the political (and chemical) boondoggle it has become, except the sorts of people runners hate.

The prime time coverage on NBC was garbage. It was impossible to figure out when big events would be shown and tons of TV time was wasted with Michael Phelps talking about mental health and whatever. Even if the prime time broadcast was perfectly done, COVID definitely dampened the mood. I ran into a number of people who did not even know the Olympics were going forward in 2021 with COVID. Add that to the lack of star power (no Bolt, Phelps, crappy time for Biles, etc.) and you get a lousy TV audience.