The 2024 Paris Summer Olympics were broadcast all over the world. This year’s games began on July 26, and were the forefront event in the public attention for weeks on end. Not only broadcast on traditional media such as television and radio, this year’s games were highly covered by online livestreams. These broadcasts were immensely popular in some countries, and were likely one of the most popular media for people to watch and cheer for their country.
Streams Charts tracks data for online livestreams, which are hosted on platforms. These broadcasts were diverse: some were free-to-watch for international audiences, whereas many were region-locked for viewers coming from the home-country of the broadcaster. They were a popular option for many fans across the world to view the Olympic Games in a cheap but enjoyable manner. Streams took place on platforms such as YouTube Live, Twitch, Kick, CHZZK, and many more. Streams Charts has collected data spanning the entire 2024 Summer Olympics, to present the online viewership results for this global event.
On July 26, Paris welcomed the Summer Olympic Games with its Opening ceremony. The event featured multiple musicians, acts, and spectacle for the global audience which tuned in. On this opening day, online viewership for the Olympics generated 6.5M hours of watch time. This was only the first step, as viewership continued to grow and climb throughout the event, and on Aug 5 the Olympics eventually reached 19.16M Hours Watched in a single day.
The Olympics were one of the most-covered sporting events in the livestreaming industry this year. The games were broadcast by 230 channels, and the entire duration of the Olympics-related streams saw 915 individual broadcasts. In total, the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics generated 153.44M Hours Watched.
Viewership for the event peaked at different points, largely reflecting which countries and events were most popular. On August 1, the games recorded 2.94M concurrent viewers, which largely came from the coverage of the Women’s Artistic Gymnastics Individual All-Around event. This particular event was highly popular thanks to two athletes, Simone Biles of the United States and Rebeca Andrade of Brazil. Biles is a celebrity in her own right and has a passionate media following from North America, who watched her earn Gold in this event. Andrade of Brazil brought a sizeable Brazilian viewership to the event, who were excited to see a compatriot succeed and earn a silver medal.
Brazil were one of the largest concurrent audiences for this year’s Olympic Summer Games. On August 6, viewership reached 3.78M Peak Viewers, and over 2.42M of these viewers were Portuguese-speaking fans watching Brazil’s Women’s Football Semi-final against Spain. The Brazilian team enjoyed a well-fought 4-2 victory against Spain, although they ultimately lost 1-0 against the US in the Finals, where viewership failed to match the excitement observed in their match against Spain.
Viewership for the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics came from a global audience of fans. The attention the event received cannot be boiled down to a single audience, and Streams Charts has collected data to highlight the many audiences behind this sporting event. Based on the data of channels which broadcasted the event, we can present the demographics which made up the broadcasters of the Olympic Games.
Generally, most of the broadcasts for the Olympics came from Organization channels. These channels are owned by a company, organization, or agency, and many of these channels hosted region-locked broadcasts of the games. Organizations made up 59.5% of total channels, and Male channels were accountable for another 34.7% of Olympics broadcasters.
Male channels, although only making up roughly a third of total broadcasters, were accountable for 70.2% of viewership. This viewership reflects highly popular celebrity broadcasters, who covered the Olympic Games on their personal channels. Apart from these outliers, organizational channels such as news and sports cover companies were the largest contributor to viewership.
5.2% of all channels to cover the Olympics were Female, but these streamers did not receive viewership in line with other demographics. These channels contributed only 0.1% to total viewership, unable to match Male or Organization channels. However, without male celebrities heavily skewing the top-end of Male viewership statistics, organizations would account for the vast majority of viewership, and Male would have also contributed much less towards viewership.
In terms of the countries these broadcasters came from, this generally reflected the population of the involved countries. Larger countries involved with the Olympics made up the top of our data, with India and the United States leading the way. South Korea saw far more coverage than expected for a country of their size, highlighting the country’s patriotic nature and how perceptive their population is to livestreaming.
Larger European countries such as France and Spain were well-covered for broadcasts of the Olympics, and Argentina and Brazil represented South America here. Brazil was a huge contributor to viewership of the Olympics, thanks to a singular popular broadcaster, whose viewership we will explore later. This Brazilian livestreamer was one of his country’s official broadcast rights holders for the Olympic Games, and his viewership reflected the official nature of his streams.
Moving across to the platforms which saw Olympics coverage, YouTube Live was by far the most popular option, making up 99.2% of total viewership for the games. The red platform was so popular thanks to the platform’s ability to region-lock livestreams. This option disallows international viewers from accessing the broadcast, allowing broadcasters to comply with local broadcast rights. Many news coverage platforms, which held rights to broadcast the Olympics locally, held region-locked streams on YouTube Live.
Twitch was the next-most popular platform option, which most of its viewership reflecting larger Twitch creators who covered the event on their personal channels. Across on YouTube, viewership for the games were split across three major categories: Sports, Entertainment, and News & Politics. Sports reflected 78.2% of viewership on YouTube, which were mostly live broadcasts of the games in progress. The News & Politics and Entertainment categories were largely more focused on discussion and news coverage of the events, rather than live sports coverage.
In terms of the Olympics’ most popular broadcasters, CazéTV of Brazil was the clear leader. The Brazilian is a well-known sports broadcaster and personality, and his coverage of live sports events often reach millions of Brazilian fans. He was able to acquire local broadcasting rights for the Olympics, which allowed him to host YouTube Live streams covering the events live.
Cazé’s large Brazilian audience was accountable for 105.31M Hours Watched, a majority portion of the game’s total online viewership. His success reflects not only the potential of the livestreaming industry for sports events, but the Brazil’s passionate and sports-interested population.
Aside from the Brazilian streamer, viewership for the Olympics mostly came from sports broadcasting companies or news organizations. Claro Sports of Mexico was the most popular traditional sports broadcaster, with 32.78M Hours Watched record. Other news organizations such as FRANCE 24 were popular both for their main broadcast, and their English-language coverage.
HasanAbi was the next-most popular independent streamer to cover the Olympics on his channel, but without local broadcasting rights he was unable to cover the games the same was as Cazé. The North American broadcaster was his platform’s most-watched creator, with 446K Hours Watched. Cazé blurs the line between streamer and broadcast organization, and his official status as local broadcaster was something no other streamer could match.
Now that we know how the viewership for the Olympics were achieved, we can directly compare its viewership to other major sporting events which took place this year. Compared to the EUFA EURO 2024 and Copa América 2024, the Olympics were vastly more popular than both events. While football is the world’s most popular sport, the broad coverage and wider variety of sports allowed the Olympics to be more appealing.
The Paris Olympics received 82.9% more watch time than the UEFA EURO 2024, which achieved an impressive 83.88M Hours Watched. This makes the event one of the most-watched events in the entire livestreaming industry for 2024, and the Olympics still managed to almost double the watch time achieved by this football event. Even when the Copa América and EUFA EURO’s 2024 viewership are combined, they cannot match the 153.44M HW achieved by the Olympics.
By tracking Twitch Chat statistics for the events, we can directly analyse viewer sentiment for sports, athletes, and countries throughout the Summer Games. This data does come from Twitch, which features a sizeable North American audience. This leaves a slight bias towards North American culture in the data, which is nevertheless insightful.
Across all sports which were on display at the Olympic Games this Summer in Paris, football was by far the most popular. The ancient sport was mentioned over 126,000 times in Twitch Chats throughout the duration of the games, and was the only sport to reach six-figure mentions.
Football was followed by Shooting, which emerged as one of the most popular sports at the Olympics thanks to sudden online vitality. This year’s Olympic Summer Games were the host to many moments and snapshots which took the internet by storm, being shared countless times across social media as memes, and receiving significant media coverage.
Shooting and Breaking were both affected by this new-wave internet virality, although for differing reasons. Shooting attracted attention as a Turkish competitor was seemingly ill-equipped compared to his rivals, but nevertheless achieved Silver at the event. An Australian competitor in Breaking suffered a wash-out from the Olympic Games, quickly being eliminated for her performance. Her attempt faced criticism and bullying online, and the negative attention nonetheless lead to her discipline being one of the Olympics’ most-discussed events. Later, we will look at the Twitch Chat data for these viral athletes, along with other personalities and celebrities who were in the forefront of the Olympics coverage.
In terms of the countries which make up the Olympics, the USA was the most-mentioned platform, with 412.8K Mentions. The country was not only the most successful at the Olympics this Summer, with 126 total medals achieved, but also the most popular on Twitch. Host country France was the next-most popular country, with 126.1K Mentions.
Japan and China were the 3rd and 4th most-discussed countries, and the only Asian ones to appear in our ranking. Japan was especially popular, achieving 124.6K Mentions and 45 total medals. Aside from these two, mentioned countries largely reflected North America and Europe, also including Australia and Brazil.
European countries appeared to be especially popular in our statistics; countries with low populations and middling performances at this year’s Olympics, such as Sweden, Norway, and Ireland, achieved oddly high mentions. Twitch viewership largely comes from English-speaking audiences, which reflects North America and international English-speakers, such as Europe. Their mentions reflect awareness and status of these countries on Twitch, rather than strictly their performance at the Olympic Games.
Looking towards the most popular Olympic celebrities of the Summer Games on Twitch, LeBron James of the US was the most-discussed athlete of the entire event, with over 41.3K Mentions. This makes the American player more-discussed than the countries of Spain and Italy. Nikola Jokić was another highly popular basketball player, although the Serbian athlete could not match James’ fame.
Yusuf Dikeç is the Turkish sport shooter we mentioned before. The athlete achieved only virality at the Olympics after achieving his silver medal with seemingly no equipment. On the flip side, Korean athlete Kim Ye-Ji was taken as a counter-example of a fully-geared Olympic sport shooter. Despite both athletes often appearing side-by-side in viral images, Dikeç received the king’s share of the media coverage and 6.7K Mentions in Twitch Chats.
Snoop Dogg and Tom Cruise were only two of the celebrities to attend this year’s Summer Games, although the two were likely the most popular of these famous entertainers. The American was in Paris for the entirety of the Olympics, active in media events throughout the games. Snoop was often seen in the crowd whenever another American was competing for a medal, and in total he received 20.8K Mentions, making him the Paris Olympics’ second-most-popular celebrity.
Turning towards strictly the most-discussed athletes of the event, Simone Biles lead the way with 9.4K Mentions, falling only behind LeBron James as the next-most-discussed athlete. North American athletes were particularly dominant in Twitch Chat discussions, and any of these athletes who have achieved an online social media following were especially popular.
The most-discussed athletes of the events largely reflected medal winners and record breakers from various countries across the globe, with one exception. Rachael Gunn of Australia is the breakdancer who suffered online abuse we covered earlier, despite achieving zero points during her run at the Olympics, the Australian was one of the Summer’s most-discussed athletes.
Other highly-discussed competitors include Imane Khelief, who received wide-spread media coverage on the basis of how she fit into gender eligibility tests for boxing. The Algerian had previously been banned from an event ran by the International Boxing Association, although the Olympics supported the sportswoman and criticized the decision to ban her. The Algerian was not only the gold-winning welterweight boxer at the Olympics, but also the sports’ most popular athlete, having received 2.3K Mentions.
Broadcasts for the 2024 Summer Olympics were diverse and available across countless media. In terms of the online livestreaming industry, the event was one of the most-watched sporting events of the year, and outperformed other major events such as the UEFA EURO 2024. Viewership for the Olympic games this year largely came from CazéTV of Brazil, who represented Brazil’s large and passionate sporting audience. Many moments from the Summer Games went viral, and influenced the popularity and cultural influence of many sports, athletes, and countries.
