The European Broadcasting Union has announced record-breaking Milano Cortina viewing figures.
Members of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) have reported “exceptional” engagement across the continent, with many stating Milano Cortina 2026 represented their most successful Winter Olympic Games ever. Dominating national viewing statistics, public service media organisations provided hundreds of millions of viewers with free-to-air content during the event, consistently outperforming their typical market share across linear and digital platforms.
In Austria, ORF’s more than 500 hours of coverage reached 81 per cent of the TV population aged 12 and over, becoming most watched Games in the broadcaster’s history. With 290 million minutes streamed, digital engagement was also record-breaking.
A substantial increase over Beijing 2022’s 5.46 million reach was reported in Czechia, with Česká televize stating total coverage reached approximately 7.39 million viewers.
Finland’s Yle also saw an increase from four years ago, recording 4.5 million linear viewers against Beijing’s 4.1 million. Digital audiences demonstrated 69 per cent growth against Paris 2024 and 165 per cent against Beijing 2022.
More than 50 million viewers watched coverage on France Télévisions, with France 2 peaking at 6.5 million viewers – a 52 per cent audience share – during coverage of the French biathletes’ gold and silver medal wins.
ARD and ZDF performed well in Germany, with the former reaching around 40 million viewers on Das Erste, equivalent to nearly half of the population. More than 85 million views were generated across the ARD Mediathek and Sportschau.de, the highest usage in ARD Mediathek history. With an average viewership of around 3.2 million, ZDF achieved a 23.3 per cent market share across its coverage.
Two out of three Italians watched RAI’s coverage in the host nation, with more than 9.2 million viewers for the Opening Ceremony and 6.2 million for the Closing Ceremony, shares of 46 per cent and 31 per cent respectively.
Around 73.8 per cent of the population in the Netherlands viewed NOS coverage during the Games period, with the broadcaster also receiving approximately 55 million visits to Olympic content via its digital platforms.
Records fell in Norway, with NRK reaching 4.1 million across both linear TV and online – equivalent to around 87 per cent of the population aged between 10 and 79. A total of 14.7 million hours were viewed on NRK TV with a digital reach of 2.169 million, or 45.7 per cent of the population.
Poland’s TVP saw significant growth against Beijing 2022, averaging 621,697 viewers of live Olympic coverage on TVP 1 and 270,286 viewers on TVP Sport, more than doubling its figures over Beijing.
In Sweden, SVT reached 7.4 million viewers, the broadcaster’s highest Olympic reach since it last held the rights in 2012, despite only having live rights to about half the events. Nearly 4 million watched its coverage online.
RTV SLO reached three quarters of the Slovenian population across TV, radio and digital platforms, its strongest Olympic performance in a decade, driven by more than 200 hours of original programming. Social media views reached almost 6 million,
In Slovakia, the ice hockey quarter final between Slovakia and Germany averaged 835,000 viewers on STVR’s Šport channel, making it the most-watched programme across the entire Slovak TV market. Just under 843,000 livestreams played on stvr.sk – the highest ever recorded for the platform.
Switzerland’s SRG Broadcasters RTS, RSI and SRF reached 4.8 million TV viewers with Alpine skiing particularly popular. Several races average more than 1 million viewers to deliver market shares of around 80 per cent. More than 30 million livestream views were recorded across SRG’s digital platforms.
Adapting its coverage in response to electricity shortages in the nation, Ukraine’s Suspilne mainly emphasised digital distribution while maintaining a strong linear presence on Suspilne Sport, reaching around 5 million of the population. Social media performance was also strong, and website streaming generated 714,473 hours watched.
BBC Sport’s coverage in the UK delivered its largest ever figures, driven by 83 million streams and more than 44 million streamed hours across BBC iPlayer, the BBC Sport website and app. A total of 26.3 million viewers watched in TV, peaking at 5.5 million on BBC One for team GB’s mens curling final.
Andreas Aristodemou, director of olympics, EBU said: “Milano Cortina 2026 stands as the strongest Winter Olympic Games on record for EBU Members, with audiences across Europe engaging at historic levels from Opening Ceremony through to the final medal events. The breadth of engagement across broadcast, streaming and digital platforms confirms the continued importance of universal access to major sporting events for audiences across Europe. Reach at this scale is something that only public service media can provide, bringing entire nations together free-to-air for moments that matter. We are proud to work in partnership with the IOC to ensure the Olympic Games remain accessible to the widest possible audiences across Europe.”
