Warner Bros. Discovery Olympics coverage hits streaming records

Warner Bros. Discovery is claiming the gold at this year’s Olympic Games, boasting record streaming and viewership figures for its coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics in Europe.

Official figures released by WBD on Monday show the company reached a cumulative 215 million viewers in Europe across its television and streaming platforms, fully 23 percent, or 40 million, more than with the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

The group recorded more than 7 billion minutes streamed across all platforms, six times the Tokyo total. Sunday, Aug. 4 was the record breaker, with 600 million minutes streamed by Max and discovery+ subscribers. It was the day of the Men’s 100m final, the tennis gold medal match between Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz, the final day of swimming events and the final of the women’s road race in cycling.

Olympics coverage helped supercharge WBD’s subscriber growth, with what the company said was a record number of new paid streaming subscribers signing up during the Games period, a 77 percent jump on Tokyo 2020, though they did not give specific figures.

“Paris 2024 has exceeded all expectations for fans and audiences, and for Max and Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming business,” said WBD CEO and president of global streaming and games JB Perrette. “We’ve added millions of new paying subscribers, and engaged millions of viewers daily on streaming who have watched billions of minutes of content during the games. Our streaming growth momentum is only gaining strength, and we’ve still got almost half the global addressable market to go.”

WBD had a lot riding on the Paris Olympics. This year’s games are the first since the merger of Discovery and WarnerMedia into WBD and the network timed the launch of its stand-alone streaming service Max in Europe to capitalize on the attention around the event. Max launched in its first 20 European countries May 21 and in France on June 11. WBD carried the Olympics across 47 markets in 20 languages in Europe on its streaming platforms Max and Discovery+, and on linear TV and online through its Eurosport channels as well as on free-to-air networks in Norway (TVNorge), Sweden (Kanal 5) and Finland (Kutonen, TV5). Yahoo