New audience data from Milano Cortina 2026 shows streaming now dominates Olympic consumption, with broadcasters reporting record digital engagement.
Following the online success of Paris 2024, newly released audience figures from broadcasters around the world show that streaming platforms are front and center of major event sports coverage nowadays. And while the IOC has yet to release consolidated global streaming totals, it looks like most broadcasters broke records for the Winter Games, some impressively.
Here’s a roundup of data released so far.
Unsurprisingly, in the host country, Olympic consumption reached exceptional levels across broadcast and digital platforms. IOC and EBU reporting indicates that around two-thirds of the Italian population watched coverage, with audiences consuming more Milano Cortina viewing than the previous several Winter Games combined. Peak linear audiences included 9.2 million viewers for the opening ceremony and about 6.2 million for the closing ceremony, while early alpine skiing coverage peaked at roughly 4.9 million viewers.
While RAI has not released a standalone streaming total, the scale of reach and viewing time strongly suggests significant digital uptake alongside television, reinforcing how host-nation engagement increasingly spans multiple platforms rather than traditional broadcast alone.
France Télévisions also reported strong digital consumption via its france.tv platform, reflecting a broader uplift in European streaming when Olympic events occur in favorable time zones. Early reporting indicated roughly 21 million video views on france.tv during initial coverage windows, already surpassing engagement from the Beijing Games cycle and reinforcing the shift toward platform-based viewing among French audiences. With the next Winter Olympics occurring in the French Alps in 2030, the broadcaster is well set for streaming success.
Sweden’s public broadcaster SVT reported strong cross-platform engagement following the return of Olympic rights to the network. By early in the Games, SVT had achieved a total reach of about 6 million viewers, representing roughly 60% of the Swedish population, with the mixed curling final attracting around 3 million viewers across platforms. Again, SVT did not separate streaming figures from broadcast totals, but even this showcases the trend of broadcasters to measure performance in combined digital-plus-linear terms rather than traditional TV ratings alone.
The BBC reported its strongest Winter Olympics digital performance on record, driven primarily by streaming consumption. Across the Games, audiences generated 83 million streams and more than 44 million hours viewed online across BBC platforms, while total TV reach hit 26.3 million viewers (though not at the same time). The event also produced the BBC’s biggest weekly digital audience since Paris 2024, with 12.23 million accounts accessing Olympic content during the Games. Social engagement was equally strong, delivering 235 million views across platforms, while the BBC Sport website and app drew 16.3 million unique users.
Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) once more positioned streaming at the centre of its Olympic strategy after a wildly successful Paris, and reported record digital engagement across discovery+ and Max-platform services. Total streaming hours viewed across Europe were more than double compared with Beijing 2022, while subscriber viewing increased sharply during the first days of the Games. Its coverage included simultaneous live streams of every event, with peaks of 11 concurrent events and more than 100 medal competitions available live. The Games were also amplified through large-scale digital distribution, with billions of social video views generated across Eurosport and TNT Sports platforms.
NBCUniversal reported exceptionally strong digital usage led by Peacock, reinforcing the platform’s emerging role as a primary Olympic distribution outlet rather than a companion service. With the LA Summer Games coming in 2028, this is welcome news for the company in a turbulent US media landscape.
By mid-Games, audiences had streamed around 5.3 billion minutes of Olympic coverage, roughly double the streaming volume recorded during PyeongChang 2018. Across the event as a whole, Peacock and NBC digital platforms helped drive average daily cross-platform audiences of roughly 23–26 million viewers, while global IOC figures indicate more than 11.2 billion minutes of Milano-Cortina content were streamed in the US market alone.
Australia’s rights holder Nine reported significant cross-platform reach across free-to-air and streaming, with Olympic coverage reaching roughly 12 million Australians across broadcast and digital distribution. Like some of the European broadcasters, Nine did not release a standalone streaming total, but its Stan Sport streaming service carried a substantial portion of the live digital viewing. This highlights the increasingly central role of subscription streaming services in markets that historically relied on free-to-air Olympic coverage.
It is tempting to think that the success of streaming from events such as the Olympics is driven primarily by the technology’s ability to deliver multiple sports at the same time. WBD talked of carrying 11 concurrent events from Milano Cortina. In the Summer Games, double that number of streams can easily be achieved, delivering the choice to watch the events that interest them that viewers demand.
However, the way that combined figures are being reported hints at a different blueprint for the future. This sees success in premium live sports now depending less on owning a single distribution pipe, and more on orchestrating a multi-platform experience that meets viewers wherever they choose to watch. It is a blended ecosystem that sees linear TV provide the reach, streaming platforms and social video operating together to increase depth and personalization, and social media powering discovery and engagement.
Despite matches not being scheduled against each other and the tournament being widely available on traditional TV services, we would not be surprised to see the same model deployed at the 2026 FIFA World Cup this summer. Again, in 2026 this might well break its own streaming records set during Qatar 2022.