With the Beijing 2022 Paralympics now come to a close it’s interesting to see if viewership for the games hasn’t always been truly all that lower than the Olympics.
Whilst it might seem that way, the numbers from the last Olympiads, show a whole different story. And countries are making an effort in their commentating team.
Channel 4 announced that they would have an entire disabled presenting team for the competition which ran between March 4 and 13 – so, perhaps that was one thing that encouraged even more people to tune in?
What are the Paralympics?
The Paralympic Games is a multi sport event where athletes with an impairment compete. The competition was first known as the International Stoke Mandeville games.
They later became the Paralympic Games and took place for the first time in Rome in 1960. In 1976 the first Winter Games in Paralympic history took place in Sweden.
Since the summer games of Seoul in 1988 and winter games of Albertville in 1992, the games have taken part in the same cities and venues as the Olympics.
Paralympic viewership since 2016
Between the 2012 and 2020 para games, there has been an undeniable increase in the viewership of the Paralympic Games. The Rio 2016 Paralympic Games counted about 4.1 billion viewers globally.
This is up from the 3.8 billion who tuned in for the 2012 London Paralympic Games. Globally the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games had 4.25 billion viewers.
What this shows is that Paralympic viewership is actually on a rise. The Pyeong Chang 2018 Paralympic Games had 265,4 million viewers for France – nearly a 300 percent increase from previous years.
This is good news for France as they are the next city to hold both the Paralympics and the Olympics.
Globally the 2018 Pyeong Chang Paralympic games, racked up 2.02 billion viewers. And the Sochi in 2014 games had 2.1 billion people tuning in to watch the events.
At the time they were the most watched Paralympic Games in history. And with the Beijing 2022 games coming to an end soon, it will be exciting to see if that number has increased.
Olympic viewership in previous Olympiads
Interestingly enough it is the Olympic viewership that is down. The New York Times revealed that the ratings for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics were a disappointment.
Indeed they reveal that NBC were averaging 16.8 million viewers a night, a tough drop from the 29 million who tuned in during the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
Indeed we are seeing that the global trend of olympic viewership is dropping. In 2016, 3.6 billion people tuned in for the Olympics and in 2020, that number fell down to 3.05 billion.
NBC News have said that the Tokyo Summer Games were the lowest audience since NBC started broadcasting in 1988.
But why?
Some of the reasons for that might include the COVID-19 pandemic but not only. NBC have revealed that the lack of well known athletes is very problematic for ratings. The 2020 Games were the first ones since 2004 without Micheal Phelps, and Usain Bolt. Furthermore, the day where Simone Biles dropped out of the gymnastics events, tanked the channels ratings.
It is the same story for the Winter Olympics. The US lacks big names in a number of sports such as ice skating. We can only imagine what it felt for NBC not to have any NHL players, in this years Ice Hockey Olympic team.
Furthermore, half pipe champion Shawn White also announced that the 2022 games were his last. There are chances that the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano/Cortina d’Ampezzo will repeat the pattern that has been happening.
Another reason why this might be happening is location. There is a significant time difference between countries such as the US and Japan. More so than in 2016 and 2012. This makes it much more difficult for people to tune in live.
So is Paralympic viewership truly all that lower?
No! And that is a very good thing! We are seeing a rise in the people that tune into the Paralympics, and a drop in Olympic viewership.
The numbers from the 2022 Winter Games haven’t come in yet but we are excited to see them. It is refreshing to see the Paralympic Games get so much recognition.