Olympics opening ceremony lands largest audience since London 2012

The Paris Olympics opening ceremony drew the largest audience for the event since London 2012.

This year’s ceremony was the first since London to be held in the same time zone and was leagues ahead of the 1.9m (33%) average who watched the Covid-delayed Tokyo 2020 equivalent from 11.20am-4pm on a Friday in July 2021. It peaked with 7.8m at 8pm, averaging almost that figure across its near five hours of broadcast.

Paris 2024, which was staged across the city rather than in a stadium for the first time in the event’s history, also scored well above the Rio de Janeiro ceremony, which averaged 2.7m (48.1%) from 11.45pm-2am on a Friday in August 2016.

However, the rain-drenched Paris ceremony could not quite match the 10.1m (44.8%) who watched London’s opener, which peaked with 27m.

BBC1’s coverage of the Paris 2024 Olympic opening ceremony dominated the schedule across its run time with only Coronation Street on ITV1 coming close with 2.7m (17.6%) from 8pm-9pm.

The ceremony ate into its 9pm rivals’ audiences, with the second part of Champions: Full Gallop trotting along with 520,000 (3.6%), a dip on the 880,000 (8.2%) who watched last week’s launch episode. The first three episodes are boxsetted on ITVX.

Channel 4’s offering of 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown entertained 470,000 (3.3%), which was also a decline on the 703,000 (6.6%) who watched last week’s series opener.

The second episode of Channel 5’s Terror at 30,000 Feet also took a hit, with 530,000 (3.6%) tuning in, 150,000 fewer than who watched last week’s opening instalment.

BBC2 aired a repeat of Fake or Fortune? to 590,000 (4.1%), according to Barb data supplied by overnights.tv.

Saturday

Day one of the Olympic event coverage kicked off in earnest, with an average of 4.3m (37.3%) tuning into BBC1 from 6.30pm-10pm.

At 9pm, Aussie drama High Country, which is boxsetted on iPlayer, continued with 710,000 (6.2%) on BBC2, broadly on par with the 740,000 (6.6%) who watched the opening part of Sandringham: A Royal Residence with Nigel Havers on C5, which edged ahead of the 665,000 (5.3%) slot average.

C4 aired film Deadpool 2 to 610,000 (6.5%) from 9pm, while sitcom Changing Ends entertained 811,000 (7.7%) on ITV1 at 9.30pm. It was followed by the second instalment of Piglets at 10pm, which took in 520,000 (5.6%), a drop on the 930,000 (9.5%) who watched the series debut in the earlier 9.30pm slot last week. Both Changing Ends and Piglets are available as boxsets on ITVX.