NBC will air Winter Olympics coverage immediately after Super Bowl LX on Feb. 8, according to Variety, passing on the chance to boost an entertainment show with the massive Super Bowl audience.
Mike Tirico will host Primetime in Milan from the field at Levi’s Stadium right after awarding the Lombardi Trophy. The show will feature women’s downhill skiing — including Lindsey Vonn’s comeback — and team figure skating. Then, Tirico flies to Italy to host the rest of the Games.
It’s the second time NBC has done this. The network aired Beijing Winter Olympics coverage after Super Bowl LVI in 2022, breaking a decades-old tradition. Before 2022, the last time a network followed the Super Bowl with another sporting event was 1976, when CBS aired a golf tournament.
The post-Super Bowl slot used to mean something. NBC’s “This Is Us” drew 27 million viewers after Super Bowl LII in 2018. The Blacklist pulled 25.7 million in 2015. Even the 2022 Olympics coverage drew 24 million viewers. But that was before streaming fractured everything.
Last year’s post-Super Bowl show — Fox’s The Floor with Rob Lowe — drew 13.94 million viewers, the worst on record. That’s about 10% of the Super Bowl’s peak audience. CBS did better with Tracker in 2024 (18.44 million), but nothing recent has come close to those old numbers.
NBC did consider using an entertainment show this year, Variety reported. St. Denis Medical or a Dick Wolf drama were options. But with NBCUniversal’s massive financial investment in the Olympics, sticking with sports made more sense.
Jenny Storms, NBCUniversal’s chief marketing officer for entertainment and sports, told Variety the strategy has shifted anyway.
“I think now, when you’re talking about a business that has multiple platforms and multiple ways to showcase content, I don’t think you have to be as reliant on a lead out,” Storms said
Under the NFL’s Super Bowl rotation from 2021, NBC gets the Super Bowl on the same cycle as the Winter Olympics every four years through at least 2033. That means the network faces the same Olympics — or — entertainment choice every time.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.