Over the 17 days of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, more than 70% of the American population tuned in to watch on NBC, which has owned the exclusive US broadcast rights since 1988. The official audience figure of 215m domestic viewers far exceeded guarantees to advertisers and represented the apotheosis of the network’s star-driven storytelling ethos under longtime NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol, one of the last high-profile sports TV impresarios.
But as the Olympics return to the Chinese capital less than 14 years on, the awareness and general buzz around the Games stateside, while impossible to quantify with any precision, has never felt lower. Despite a star-studded US Olympic team filled with established champions and promising newcomers that will march into the National Stadium during Friday’s opening ceremony and pile up medals in the weeks to come, the outcome could be a commercial nadir that makes the underwhelming ratings from last year’s Tokyo Games seem like a fond memory.
