The 2022 Opening Ceremony for the Olympics in Beijing, China resulted in some of the worst ratings in history.
QUICK FACTS:
- NBC Sports noted that Friday’s opening ceremony coverage only hit “nearly 14 million TV-only viewers,” The Blaze reported.
- This viewership is down 43% from 2018 when the Olympics took place in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
- “The previous low over the last three decades was the 1992 Barcelona games, which had 21.6 million viewers,” The Wrap reported. “And of TV-only viewers, Friday’s ceremony averaged 14 million viewers, which is in line with last year’s Summer Olympics opening ceremony and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.”
- NBCUniversal has been the heaviest hit by this downward trend after the company paid $7.75 billion to the International Olympic Committee for the broadcast rights from 2021 to 2032 for all Olympic Games, USA Today reported.
PUBLIC FIGURES ON BANNING THE OLYMPIC GAMES THIS YEAR:
“I will not watch one minute of the @Beijing2022#GenocideGames,” Meghan Mccain tweeted.
BACKGROUND:
- After a poll was taken by Morning Consult just a week before the games began, 40% of Americans said they would not be watching the Olympics due to the fact that China was the host country.
- From this same poll, 75% of Democrats said they planned to watch while only 40% of Republicans said they would be tuning in.
- The hashtag #GenocideGames was trending over the past few days and many conservatives have vowed to boycott the Olympics after reports of the Chinese Communist Party’s abuse of Uyghurs into mass imprisonment and horrific genocide.
