The Olympics are a shared viewing experience; what 'viewing' looks like continues to evolve

Just 22 years old and a lifetime of producing Olympic Games still ahead of her, Molly Solomon could not believe her professional luck. A week away from graduating from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., Solomon had landed a plum job in sports, plucked by the American broadcasting giant NBC to become an Olympic researcher.

The assignment required her to compile biographical and historical information on virtually every competitor and country competing in Barcelona for the 1992 Summer Olympics. It was also a professional Wonka ticket: NBC’s Olympic researcher position was considered the most coveted entry-level job in sports television. 

Because Solomon’s assignment occurred in a pre-Internet world, NBC sent these young Magellans around the globe to procure information on athletes as exotic to American audiences as a red diamond. Solomon would travel to 12 countries over a two-year stretch, including staying in a basement apartment in Donaueschingen, a city in then-West Germany in the middle of the Black Forest, to cover the 1991 World Weightlifting Championships. As part of the interviewing process, she drank vodka with athletes from the Unified Team at a beer garden. Her travels took her to Australia, Brazil, Canada and Sweden as well. The researcher job led to full-time work as the information assistant to host Bob Costas during NBC’s prime-time coverage in Barcelona. 

Fast-forward decades later and Solomon now holds the title of executive producer and president of NBC Olympics Production, the highest-ranking Olympics editorial position at Comcast NBCUniversal. She is responsible for all day-to-day editorial production of NBC Olympics coverage, and there are few people on the planet who spend more time thinking about the current state and future of the event.

“You have the geopolitical world changing in front of us, and we’re all seeking community and reasons to celebrate together,” Solomon said. “The Olympics can be one of the only places where we can come together and celebrate in a protected place. As we look to the future, I really believe the Olympics are going to be more significant and relevant than ever before.”

So what will the future of the Olympics look like from a viewer perspective? We start with what makes the world go ’round: money. The Olympics will almost certainly remain a top global sports property over the next 20 years, given the interest in the event as well as its natural scarcity.

“Very few properties drive national fervour like the Olympics, as each participating country has a story to tell,” said Daniel Cohen, the head of the media rights consulting division at Octagon and someone with years of experience negotiating billion-dollar deals. “For instance, Canada tends to do quite well given its population size, so there will always be value in that country. Outside of the World Cup, no other property can drive global attention and domestic and international conversations for two weeks straight as the Olympics does.”

Viewership backs that up. In 2024, Canadian audiences consumed a total of 614,000 hours of Paris Olympics content on CBC/Radio-Canada digital and streaming platforms, up 153 per cent over the Tokyo Games in 2021. In the States, the Olympics also rebounded significantly from a viewership malaise: NBC averaged 30.6 million viewers across its combined live time periods in Paris, up from an average of 15.6 million viewers for Tokyo.

Cohen said the IOC will need to continue to innovate its media rights packaging in the future and remain nimble in a changing media landscape. Expect an increase in direct-to-consumer product development such as increased streaming offerings, short-form content on social media, enhanced data for viewers, and perhaps an expansion of sports gambling. Cohen sees rights deals in countries being split between linear (free-to-air) and digital platforms. 

Broadcasters in Canada and the U.S. are betting big that audiences will not lose fervour for the product. The current CBC deal with the IOC, signed in 2022, runs from the Milano-Cortina Games through the Brisbane Olympics in 2032. 

Comcast NBCUniversal paid the IOC $7.75 billion US in total for the rights to six Olympic Games between 2014 and 2032, and last March the two entities announced a $3 billion US deal that extended NBC’s rights through 2036. 

If your prediction is that tech giants such as Netflix, YouTube, Prime Video and Apple will one day bid on Olympic media rights, many experts agree with you. Netflix now airs NFL games on Christmas Day and just procured exclusive broadcast rights for the 2027 and 2031 Women’s World Cup in both Canada and the United States. Amazon’s Prime Video has established itself as a regular NFL destination on Thursday night and just began its 11-year U.S. rights deal with the NBA; its rights deal in Canada begins with the 2026-27 season. YouTube aired its first exclusive NFL game in 2025.

“The tech streamers tend to change their rights-acquisition strategies frequently as they test what works for subscribers and viewers,” Cohen said. “So Google or Netflix’s strategy today might not be the same next year, and certainly not years from now. But if we look at Netflix right now and their ‘eventize’ strategy, the two-week Olympic sprint would be a bull’s-eye fit for them. Amazon, Netflix and Google also would see ancillary opportunities with IOC rights.”

Scott Moore, a longtime sports media executive and former head of CBC Sports and Rogers Sportsnet, worked on 11 Olympic Games for Canadian television between 1988 and 2016. He agrees with Cohen that the tech giants will show interest in the Olympics, but Moore thinks the Olympics will face an existential moment after the 2028 Games in Los Angeles, given the decline of broadcast television viewers and the challenge of getting Olympic sports in front of the public in non-Olympic years.