The Tom Cruise-Headlined Olympics Closing Ceremony Drew 20.8 Million Viewers

Tony Maglio
·2 min read
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More than 20 million people watched Tom Cruise “Mission: Impossible” the Olympics flag from Paris to Los Angeles. In all probability, it was even quite a bit more.

The closing ceremony averaged 20.8 million viewers across the live and primetime showings, according to an NBC Sports spokesperson. The spokesperson did not have more granular data for us than that, so we do not have numbers specific to the Cruise segment.

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After H.E.R. rocked the “Star-Spangled Banner” on Sunday night, Cruise rappelled from a zip line off the top of the Stade de France to retrieve the Olympic flag (and to high five the athletes), drove the flag on a conveniently-parked motorcycle past the Eiffel Tower, to an airport where a military plane was waiting, flew to L.A., and then skydived to the American golden plains, Tom Cruise-ran to the Hollywood sign and edited it to include all five Olympic rings and colors. Then some bicyclist rode off with the flag itself, ultimately delivering it to legendary American track-and-field athlete Michael Johnson at the L.A. Coliseum.

It’s ours now, Paris.

Since Cruise’s stunt first leaked — the L.A. portion of it was, of course, prerecorded (though Cruise may have the need for it, such flight speed does not currently exist) — it became a highly-anticipated part of Sunday’s ceremony. It took place toward the tail end, a passing of the torch from France to America. (A Statue of Liberty torch, it was not.)

All told, the 2024 Paris Olympics provided an average total audience delivery of 30.6 million viewers in the combined Paris primetime (2 p.m. ET to 5 p.m. ET) and U.S. primetime (8-11 p.m. ET/PT) time periods, which was up 82 percent from the Tokyo Olympics (16.9 million), according to fast national data from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics.

The Paris Olympics were streamed for 23.5 billion minutes, primarily on Peacock, which is 40 percent more than all prior Summer and Winter Olympics combined. (It was a different time, kids.)

NBC’s broadcast network itself has now won 152 consecutive Summer-Olympics nights dating back to the 1988 Seoul Olympics Closing Ceremony. That wasn’t even in the summer — it was October — and it lost out to a post-NFL “60 Minutes” and CBS’ movie of the week. How long ago was that? The Soviet Union dominated the medal count.

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