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Many wondered four years ago if NBC’s 2014 decision to secure U.S. media rights to the Olympics through 2032 for $7.75 billion was a bad business deal.
With NBC having its most-watched Winter Games in 12 years, those concerns appear to have quieted.
According to Nielsen and Adobe Analytics, NBC averaged 24 million viewers across its prime afternoon coverage (2-5 p.m. EST) and Primetime in Milan (8-11 p.m. EST and PST) through Friday. That is a 94% improvement over the 2022 Beijing Games.
This is the second straight Olympics where viewers have returned in large numbers. The 2024 Paris Summer Games were up 82% from 2021 in Tokyo.
Complete numbers from the 17 days — including the United States’ 2-1 overtime victory over Canada in men’s hockey Sunday morning — are expected to be released on Monday.
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“I think that the Paris Games deserve a lot of the credit for rejuvenating that interest and enthusiasm, and some of that momentum continued through to Milan,” NBC Sports President Rick Cordella said from Milan.
Molly Solomon, NBC’s president and executive producer for the Olympics, and her team also deserve credit for changing the network’s coverage approach after Beijing.
Instead of waiting until prime time to showcase key sports, those events were shown live via streaming along with NBC’s network and cable channels. The primetime show was reimagined to highlight key events with more interviews and analysis to supplement what viewers might have seen live earlier in the day.
“How do we best make sure that we are continuing to tell the story (of athletes) after they leave the venues? I do think that one of the improvements we made from our Paris coverage was to follow the athletes to their after-parties and reunions with their friends and families,” said Solomon, who is overseeing coverage from NBC Sports’ headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut.
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“When Alex Ferreira won (the gold medal in men’s halfpipe), we went to the bar where he was celebrating. There was a Team USA celebration for Mikaela Shiffrin, where we were there for the toast, and she talked about not being able to help Breezy Johnson get on the platform.
“These athletes trusted us to have our cameras there, and I do think it made for even richer storytelling and taking the audience there.”
NBC adopted a format used for years in other countries while also listening to viewers who demanded change. NBC had streamed all Olympic sports since the 2012 London Games, but took a big leap when NBC Universal launched Peacock in 2020.
Through Friday, 14.8 billion minutes of the Milan Games had been streamed in the U.S., more than doubling the total for all prior Winter Games combined (6.9 billion).
Viewer gains can also be credited to the U.S. team’s performance, which underperformed in Tokyo and Beijing. Those games were played in hermetically sealed environments with mostly empty venues due to COVID-19.
Thursday’s win by the U.S. in women’s hockey over Canada in overtime and Alysa Liu’s gold medal in figure skating averaged 26.7 million across NBC, USA Network, Peacock, and NBCUniversal’s other digital platforms.
USA Network and Peacock averaged 5.3 million viewers for the gold-medal hockey game, making it the most-watched women’s hockey game on record. It peaked at 7.7 million in overtime when Megan Keller scored the game-winning goal.
“It was truly a golden hour. We popped between control rooms, and you just never know what’s going to happen,” Solomon said. “The energy in our control rooms on site, we couldn’t believe the confluence of drama and excitement, but that really is what the Olympics is about. It’s unpredictable, thrilling, and it just coincided in the golden 64 minutes.”
NBC is poised to continue the momentum for the next two games. The 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles will have wall-to-wall live coverage throughout the day, while the 2030 Winter Games in the French Alps will see NBC return to the coverage formula that worked in Paris and Milan.
The 2032 Summer Games in Brisbane, Australia, will have challenges because most events will take place overnight in the U.S., but the 2034 Winter Games in Salt Lake City will again provide another live Olympics.
NBC has the rights to the Olympics through 2036. It agreed to the 2034 and ’36 Games last year for $3 billion.
“Paris begets Milan, and Milan will beget LA. I think the Olympics are just unique in many respects,” Cordella said. “The U.S.-Swiss curling match, there are hundreds of thousands of people online streaming. They’re seeking it out and watching these matchups of these athletes; they probably didn’t know about them before the Olympics began. It’s compelling TV, and that’s kind of what the Olympics does.”
The United States is on top of the hockey world for the first time in nearly a half-century. No miracle needed.
Jack Hughes scored less than 2 minutes into overtime and the U.S. beat Canada 2-1 in the gold medal final at the Milan Cortina Olympics on Sunday, earning the nation’s third men’s title at the Games and its first since the “Miracle on Ice” in 1980 — 46 years to the day of the upset over the mighty Soviet Union, too.
Unlike that ragtag group of college kids that pulled off one of the biggest shockers in sports history in Lake Placid, the Americans in Milan were a machine that rode goaltender Connor Hellebuyck and a roster full of NHL players through the tournament unbeaten.
Still, they were underdogs again against the stacked Canadians and came out on top — again.
“This is all about our country right now,” said Hughes, who lost at least one and maybe two of his front teeth taking a high stick during the game. “I love the U.S.A. I love my teammates. It’s unbelievable. The USA Hockey brotherhood is so strong.”
Early in the three-on-three overtime, Zach Werenski took the puck away from Nathan MacKinnon and passed it to Hughes, who was wide open streaking to the net. Hughes fired a shot past Jordan Binnington 1:41 in to send players into a wild celebration as the rival Canadians watched from the bench.
Asked his favorite moment during his Olympic debut, captain Auston Matthews quipped, “I think when Jack scored. ... I’ll definitely remember Jack’s goal.”
There was a note of sadness amid all the joy as Werenski and Matthew Tkachuk carried a Johnny Gaudreau No. 13 jersey around the ice in tribute to the beloved player who was killed along with his brother in 2024.
Gaudreau’s parents, Guy and Jay, his widow, Meredith, and their oldest children were in attendance. It was Johnny Jr.'s second birthday and he was brought on the ice with older sister Noa for the team photo.
“We just wanted to show the Gaudreau family our support,” Brady Tkachuk said of the player known as “Johnny Hockey.” “He was so near and dear to a lot of us, and we miss him dearly. We did it for him.”
Hellebuyck was extraordinary, stopping 41 of the 42 shots he faced as Canada tilted the ice toward him over the final two periods. He made the save of the tournament by getting his stick on the puck on a shot from Devon Toews in the third period, then minutes later denied Macklin Celebrini on a breakaway — something he also did to Connor McDavid earlier.
“He was our best player by a mile,” winger Matt Boldy said. “He’s an absolute stud. He wants to be in those moments. He wants to make the saves. And he did just that, so he was definitely our MVP.”
It was a glorious weekend for Team USA, with the women’s hockey team also defeating Canada in overtime to win gold. For the men, it was only fitting the Americans needed to go through Canada, their northern neighbor that beat them at the 4 Nations Face-Off a year ago and has won every international competition over the past 16 years that featured the world’s best players.
Not anymore.
Winning a fast-paced, riveting game that was full of big hits and plenty of post-whistle altercations, the U.S. got a goal from Boldy 6 minutes in and led until Cale Makar tied it late in the second period. Hellebuyck and the penalty kill was a perfect 17 for 17 at the Olympics.
“I can’t even believe this,” Hughes said. “I mean it’s such an unbelievable game, USA-Canada. Such a good game. There’s so many great players. We’re a great team. That’s exactly how we wanted it to go. We’re underdogs to Canada, (but we) beat them. It could have gone either way.”
Hughes paid a painful price when he took the high stick and wound up face down on the ice. The teeth were out, but the celebration wasn’t far away.
“More people are going to be looking at his medal than his teeth,” Boldy said.
The U.S. finally came through after generations of churning out talent from the grassroots level like a production line. All but two of the 25 players on the team went through USA Hockey’s National Team Development Program.
That group of 23 includes captain Auston Matthews, the top line of Brady and Matthew Tkachuk and Jack Eichel, and the second set of brothers, Jack and Quinn Hughes. Much of the team played together either at the program, under-18s, the world junior championship or some combination of them.
The U.S. winning silenced criticism of general manager Bill Guerin and his management group choosing a roster full of experienced veteran players to fill specific roles and leaving four of the top 10 American goal-scorers in the NHL this season at home. The players they brought got the job done.
“There are whisky drinkers and milk drinkers and we got a lot of whisky drinkers on this team,” coach Mike Sullivan said. “One of the things that Billy Guerin and I talked about from the very beginning was trying to build a team in the true sense of the word, so we looked at a deep group of American talent and these decisions were very difficult. They weren’t easy. You look at how this group is constructed, there was a thought process that we had players that could play in all situations.”
Some decisions were no-doubters, like Sullivan giving the net to Hellebuyck, who stopped 131 of the 137 shots he faced throughout the tournament and was at his best against Canada.
“He was our backbone — today even more so than the rest of the tournament,” forward Vincent Trocheck said. “He saved our lives there a couple times in the third. He was unbelievable.”
Canada, back-to-back Olympic champions in 2010 and ’14 and winners of three of the first five, fell short while playing without injured captain Sidney Crosby. The 38-year-old two-time gold medalist and three-time Stanley Cup champion left the quarterfinal game against Czechia and sat out the semifinal game against Finland.
“It was a tough decision,” Crosby said. “Obviously, in your head you always want to be out there and find very way possible. But not at the expense of what needs to be done. And them watching how we played today, the guys played incredible.”
McDavid, who wore the “C” in Crosby’s absence, suffered another devastating defeat on the doorstep of a title. He and the Edmonton Oilers have lost to Matthew Tkachuk and the Florida Panthers in the Stanley Cup Final each of the past two years.
Jack Hughes lost some teeth before he won Olympic gold for the United States.
The forward who put the puck in the net in overtime to give the Americans a 2-1 victory over Canada in the men’s hockey final at the Milan Cortina Games on Sunday did so with a bloody mouth and less of a bite than he began the game with. That’s because Hughes was spittin’ chiclets after taking a stick to the mouth from Sam Bennett in the third period.
“I looked on the ice and saw my teeth,” said Hughes, who had one knocked out in an NHL game a few years ago, too. “I was like, ‘Here we go again.’”
Well, that’s a mouthful to say.
The 24-year-old Hughes is a forward for the New Jersey Devils. He scored past Canadian goalie Jordan Binnington after a little more than 1 1/2 minutes of extra time.
Hughes’ older brother, Quinn, 26, is a defenseman for the Americans, who won the country’s first gold in men’s hockey since the 1980 “ Miracle on Ice ” team that upset the heavily favored Soviet Union at Lake Placid.
“No one loves the game more than him,” Quinn said about Jack. “He’s got so much passion. He’s a gamer. He made it happen.”
Other teammates figured that Jack Hughes will be just fine without some of his chompers. There was not exactly a whole lot of sympathy going on around among the 2026 Olympic champs.
After all, it is a well-known and frequent occurrence for hockey players to lose a tooth — or teeth — in their often-violent sport.
“Who cares at this point, to be honest?” said Matt Boldy, who scored the other U.S. goal on Binnington, just 6 minutes after the game began. “I think more people are looking at his medal than his teeth. I’m sure he’ll be OK.”
That’s certainly something to chew on.
Eileen Gu snatched a gold ribbon off a gift basket on her way to the mountain Sunday and stuck it in her pocket just in case.
Just in case?
If her 16-day odyssey at the Milan Cortina Games taught the world anything, it’s that there are no sure things in sports. Especially when the athletes flip 15 feet over rock-hard snowscapes for a living.
But that gold ribbon Gu tied into a bow in her hair after her curtain-closing Olympic performance on the mountain did, in fact, match the color medal she won in the women’s ski halfpipe final.
And that gold medal also was the third she’s won over two Olympics — more than any athlete in her sport.
And she is now 6 for 6 — six events, six medals, three of them gold, three silver — over a still-young Olympic career that has cascaded well beyond sports, veering into geopolitics, inclusion and, as the gold ribbon reminded us, fashion.
“I took a big risk in trusting myself,” Gu said of her frenetic quest this year, “and I’m glad that I did.”
Gu, born in the United States but competing for her mother’s homeland of China, knows that the modeling career, the fame, the platform she commands and the message she sends wouldn’t be possible if she weren’t the best freeskier in the world. She was also the only woman willing to divide her attention between halfpipe, slopestyle and big air over the 2 1/2-week marathon of Olympic risk-taking.
It was a quest that limited her training, rest and sometimes her sanity. Never her confidence, though.
“I’m not a gambling woman, but if I were, I took a pretty big bet on myself,” Gu said. “There was a chance everything could go wrong and I could have walked away with nothing, because I was trying to do too much. But in my head, even if everything crashes and burns, I tried. I’ll never regret trying.”
The risk of doing too much once again reared its head on the first run of this bluebird day in Livigno — the halfpipe bathed one half in sun, the other in shade a day after a snowstorm postponed the final. Gu lost balance on the landing of her very first jump of the contest, forcing her to abandon the run toward the top of the pipe.
Each of her qualifying rounds at these Olympics involved a fall and a must-make return that she landed every time just to get to the final.
In halfpipe, largely viewed as the premier event in the sport and also the event where Gu has won 15 of her 20 World Cup titles, the odds of Gu not landing any of her three runs in the final seemed slim. In fact, it was none.
She ended up with not just the best score of the 32 runs by 11 athletes, but the best two scores of them all. Her second run was a 94 and her last was a 94.75.
“I tried for gold,” said Li Fanghui, who made this the first 1-2 finish for China in this event. “But my first goal was for silver.”
Gu won because she flies higher than almost everyone (except for bronze medalist Zoe Atkin), does more rotations than anyone (highlighted by two 900-degree spins in opposite directions) and, in a key separator in a 1.75-point win over Li, tried one more trick than her Chinese teammate (Gu and most skiers did six, Li only tried five).
“She is ‘Wonder Woman,’” New Zealand’s eight-place finisher Mischa Thomas said.
Gu was exhausted but happy after landing her 16th run in 16 days
After Gu landed smoothly on her final run, she lifted her right hand in the air, skied to the scoring area, then pumped her fist. That was trip No. 16 down the mountain over 16 days — every one of them dangerous in their own way, every one of them packed with pressure.
“I’m so tired, but I’m so happy,” she said.
At the end, with the gold medal secure, she wasn’t too tired to run in her ski boots to the side of the halfpipe, if only to reach over the blue fencing and share the love with a cohort of fans who celebrated her every appearance in the pipe by chanting “Gu Ailing, Gu Ailing,” which is the Chinese way to say her name.
She isn’t the only skier who brought a handful of fans to this remote village in northern Italy. But she’s the only one who brought a following. For these Olympics, they came from Stanford, from San Francisco, from China and many points in between.
Part of the reason she skis for China was to get more eyeballs on her sport. She recited figures from the Chinese government that said more than 300 million people have taken to the mountain in that country since she first burst onto the world stage at the Beijing Games four years ago.
“She brings a lot of visibility to our sport, which is awesome, especially in China,” said Canada’s Amy Fraser, the only woman to beat Gu in a halfpipe over the last four years. “That’s my favorite event we go to. People treat us like proper celebrities when we go there.”
An event defined by nations, allegiances makes Gu a perpetual lightning rod
What country she competes for will follow Gu around until she’s through skiing, and probably beyond.
Four years ago, the debate felt more supercharged because it was fresher and the Olympics were in the same country she was representing.
This time, a lot of it felt rehashed and reheated.
Vice President JD Vance weighed in on Fox News last week. Gu stuck to the message she’s been preaching all along: the more the merrier when it comes to her sport and, as for her critics, “I encourage those people to use that energy and direct it toward something that makes the world better in their own way.”
With the six medals, Gu stands alone among those in the relatively new sport of freeskiing. She’s also shooting up there in the pantheon of Olympians in any sport.
“I walked away as the most decorated free skier of all time, male or female,” Gu said. “I have the most gold medals of any free skier ever, male or female, and that is something that I’m so, so proud of. It’s unbelievable to me.”
The Milan Cortina Olympics ended Sunday as the twin flames in co-host cities Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo were extinguished during a closing ceremony inside the ancient Verona Arena, roughly mid-distance between the far-flung mountain, valley and city venues that made these the most spread-out Winter Games ever.
In declaring the 2026 Games over, International Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry told local organizers that they “delivered a new kind of winter games and you set a new, very high standard for the future.”
The next Winter Games will be held in neighboring France, which received the Olympic flag in the official handover earlier in the ceremony. Following the same spread-out model, the 2030 Winter Games will stage events in the Alps and Nice, on the Mediterranean Sea, while speedskating will be held either in Italy or the Netherlands.
A total of 116 medal events were held in eight Olympic sports across 16 disciplines, including the debut of ski mountaineering this year, over the course of 17 days of competition. With the final events wrapping up just hours before the ceremony, the 50-kilometer mass start men’s and women’s cross country medals were awarded by Coventry inside the Arena.
Host Italy won its highest Winter Olympic tally ever with 30 medals — 10 gold, six silver and 14 bronze, crushing the previous record of 20 set at the Lillehammer Olympics in 1994.
“Your outstanding performance united Italians everywhere and played a fundamental role in the success of the games,’' Giovanni Malagò, the president of the Milan Cortina Foundation told the Italian athletes sitting behind him wearing headbands emblazoned with ‘’Italia.’'
The closing ceremony paid tribute to Italian dance and music — from lyric opera to Italian pop of the 20th century to the DJ beat of Gabry Ponte, who got the 1,500 athletes on their feet and dancing while color confetti exploded on stage. Italian Achille Lauro delivered the last word with the song “Incoscienti Giovani,” or reckless young people, just before athletes who so aptly harnessed their youthful energy for these Games filed out.
The 2½-hour ceremony opened with a whimsical tribute to Italian lyric opera, with the stage director rousing not only the closing ceremony cast, including Achille Lauro, but also long-dormant opera characters tucked away in crates within the amphitheater’s tunnels.
On stage, Madama Butterfly in a bright pink and green costume and Aida in golden tiers were unpacked from mirrored crates while 17th century musicians played the joyous “Libiamo ne’ lieti calici” from La Traviata, a nod to the Arena’s long history as the venue for a summer opera festival.
The opera characters, led by the jester Rigoletto, spilled out into the piazza outside, mixing with the bemused athletes who were flag-bearers for their countries, some ofwhom pulled out their phones to film.
In a later sequence, internationally acclaimed ballet dancer Roberto Bolle made his first-ever aerial performance inside a blazing ring meant to represent the sun. He was lowered to the stage that mimicked the Venetian lagoon, replete with gondolas, where he danced to a haunting song by Italian singer Joan Thiele.
In a key moment, the Olympic flame encased in a Venetian glass vessel was carried into the Arena by Italian gold medalists from the 1994 Lillehammer Games. The Olympic rings illuminated in white appeared high on the stone stairs behind the stage, flanked by national flags, when one raised the flame in the center of the stage.
This was the first Olympics for Coventry, a two-time Olympic champion in swimming, who watched much of the ceremony alongside Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
Some 12,000 spectators joined the athletes and officials for the closing ceremony, which was much more intimate affair than the opening ceremony starring Mariah Carey and Andrea Bocelli inside Milan’s San Siro soccer stadium, attended by more than 60,000 people.
The Milan Cortina Games spanned an area of 22,000 square kilometers (8,500 square miles), from ice sports in Milan to biathlon in Anterselva on the Austrian border, snowboarding and men’s downhill in Valtellina on the Swiss border, cross-country skiing in the Val di Fiemme north of Verona and women’s downhill, curling and sliding sports in co-host Cortina d’Ampezzo.
The closing ceremony concluded with the Olympic flames extinguished at the unprecedented two caldrons in Milan and Cortina, viewed in Verona via video link. A light show substituted fireworks, which are not allowed in Verona, to protect animals from being disturbed.
The Milan Cortina Paralympics’ opening ceremony will also take place in the Verona Arena, on March 6, and the Games will run until March 15.