2024 Paris Olympics Preview: What Local Businesses Need to Know

In July, the 2024 Paris Olympics will kick off in France with nearly three weeks of competition featuring 10,500 athletes across 329 different competitions, televised on NBCUniversal networks. Viewers from around the world will be tuning in throughout the contest, turning The Paris Olympics into one of the most significant advertising events occurring anywhere in the world.

Due to its massive audience and reach, this sporting spectacle offers excellent advertising opportunities not only for national brands, but for regional and local businesses as well. Cable TV, streaming, video on demand and second-screen engagement all offer powerful, cost-effective options for targeting your customer base through Olympic ad campaigns.

As the exclusive broadcasting partner of The Olympics, the networks of NBCUniversal—including channels like NBC, USA, Telemundo, and E!—will be your destination for planning media buys. Read on to learn more about the benefits of Olympic advertising, along with valuable audience insights to improve your engagement with your target customers.

The Unique Opportunity of Olympic Advertising

Even if your business has advertised around live sporting events in the past, you may not be prepared for the massive scale and impact of Olympic advertising. Consider the following:

• The 2020 Tokyo Olympics attracted more than three billion unique viewers across television and digital formats;
• Compared to the 2016 Rio Olympics, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics saw a 33 percent increase in television coverage;
• Total streaming of the 2020 Tokyo eclipsed 4.4 billion minutes;
• The Olympics are regarded by global viewers as the world’s “most appealing” sports and entertainment event.

Because of the diverse audience it draws—including consumers who don’t usually watch sports or identify as sports fans—The Paris Olympics can be an effective advertising opportunity even for businesses that don’t typically cater to a sports-viewing customer base.

Who Will Be Watching the 2024 Paris Olympics?

If the 2020 Tokyo Olympics are any indication, next year’s events should feature a diverse audience no matter how you slice it.

Data from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics suggests that female viewers slightly outnumbered male viewers, by a margin of 51 to 49 percent. Viewership is also high across all age demographics, although the highest rate of engagement is among the 50-to-64 crowd, followed close behind by viewers 65 and over.

While millennials and Gen Z audiences turn out in lower numbers for Olympics events, both of these younger audiences have demonstrated a much greater appetite for women’s sports than their older counterparts. Given the significant audience many women’s competitions have in The Paris Olympics, this viewing interest could lead to higher-than-expected ratings among younger audiences.

As for viewing platforms, 97 percent of audiences watch at least some of the Olympics on TV, followed by smartphones and tablets at 57 percent and desktop computers at 40 percent. With the increased adoption in streaming, it’s possible the share of streaming views will move higher in 2024.

The Brand Boost of Connecting with Sports Audiences

The Olympics are known for inspiring high levels of audience engagement and emotional investment. That’s great news for advertisers, because research shows that this heightened investment has a direct impact on ad performance.

Brands that advertise during the Olympics are likely to see a boost in performance when comparing campaign results to similar campaigns run outside of Olympic programming. According to NBCUniversal, these brands benefit from the following audience trends:

• 49 percent higher customer loyalty for brands that advertise during the Olympics;
• 54 percent greater differentiation from brand competitors;
• 39 percent greater ad relevance when compared to competitors.

If these trends hold true in 2024, brands will essentially get more value out of their advertising based on the improved brand impact offered by these campaigns.

Now is the time to plan your ad campaigns and start exploring your media buy options around this in-demand TV event. Between live broadcasts and replays, cable and streaming programming and other campaign options, local businesses have no shortage of options to plan out Olympic advertising that supports their business goals.

With so many options and variables to consider, a digital advertising partner can be your brand’s secret weapon when planning your media buys and maximizing your ad campaign’s return on investment. Contact us today to find out how Cox Media can help elevate your business.

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Sources

• France and Olympism: Over a Century of Firsts
• The Olympic Games of Paris 2024
• Tokyo 2020 Audience & Insights Report, International Olympic Committee, December 2021; NBC’s Tokyo Olympics Presentation – The Largest Media Event Ever – Delivers Massive Audiences & Dominates Media Landscape, NBC Sports Group Press Box, August 2021
• USA Plus-MRI, Jn21-Ap22, Scarborough. Total 2020 Summer Olympics viewers.
• NBC’s Olympic coverage creates ‘long-lasting impact’ for sponsors, SportsPro, April 2023