The Winter Olympics have come and gone and it looks like not to many people gave a shit. Ratings were extremely low.
In the end, the final day of primetime competition for the XXIII Winter Olympics was both a winner and loser to the XXII Winter Olympics of just over four years ago.
On its last Saturday, the often tractionless PyeongChang games hit a new low, dipping 5% from the previous rock bottom of February 23 with 8.7/16 metered market results on both NBC and NBC Sports Networks. As harsh as that is, last night’s results were up just over 1% from the final Saturday of Sochi 2014. A low for those Russian-based games in the early numbers, that February 22, 2014 primetime coverage on NBC-only went on to dribble in a weak 13.3 million viewers.
That small victory over 2014 may bring a toast or two around NBC HQ this morning but the overall reality is that the 2018 Winter Games are going to be the lowest rated ever with a drop of nearly 10% from the previous low of Sochi. Hell, Saturday to Saturday, last night was down 15% in metered market ratings from February 17, which was a low at the time.
The United States Olympic team was heralded as the most racially diverse ever. It is no surprise that with this racial diversity, the team had a very mediocre performance.
Since when is superficial nonsense a more important factor than winning? It’s no wonder why people tuned out. We’ve chosen as a country to celebrate some token monkey person who makes a team instead of excellence in competition.
On top of this, the Olympics just don’t have the prestige that it once had. It was a much more important event during the Cold War than it is now.
