TV Ratings: Katie Ledecky, Michael Phelps, Women's Soccer Drive Olympics Viewership
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) - Katie Ledecky's record-setting win in the 800-meter freestyle, Michael Phelps' last outing in Rio and women's soccer drove NBC's Olympics viewership on Friday.
The coverage of U.S. swimming stars delivered a 7.6 rating in adults 18-49 in primetime, according to Nielsen's overnight metered market ratings. That was on par with the previous night but down from Thursday when the heat around U.S. gymnast Simone Biles' boosted the key demo to an 8.9 rating in primetime.
Overall, Friday's Olympics coverage on NBC averaged a 15.9 rating and 28 share in Nielsen's 56 overnight metered markets, which cover about 70% of U.S. TV households. That was up slightly from the 15.5 household rating average of the games so far.
Ledecky set a new record time for the 800-meter race, besting her own mark that she set four years ago at the London games. Phelps, meanwhile, finished out what might be his final Olympic competition with the silver win in the men's 100-meter butterfly race.
NBC Sports' streaming coverage of U.S. women's soccer in the quarterfinals posted 714,000 uniques and 25.6 million live streaming minutes, making it the fourth-highest streaming event of the Olympics to date, per NBC. NBC said its NBCOlympics.com and NBC Sports app have served up 1.5 billion streaming minutes of the games so far.
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