More Use Apps to Watch the Olympics Than Ever Before!

As the world gathers to witness the grandeur of the Olympic Games, a new trend is emerging in how fans are tuning in to watch their favorite events.

Maybe not that new... Everything is moving in-app.

Here in the US, NBC's Peacock is the exclusive streamer of the Olympic Games. Historically, sports really helped Peacock gain new paying subscribers and stay ahead of rival Paramount+. Will the Olympics continue the tradition?

I should really be asking how much...

And the answer is - A lot! So much that Peacock ended July with the most revenue the app has ever earned in a single month and a massive leap from June's revenue.

According to our App Intelligence, Peacock's net revenue from the App Store and Google Play rose 21% to $40M in July. That's net, which means what NBC gets to keep after paying Apple and Google their fees.

The majority of the revenue came from the App Store, which outpaces Google Play by about 3x.

This growth sprout comes after three fairly flat months that saw revenue decreasing from its new year high and stagnating until July.

I suspect August will also be a great month for Peacock.

Another app that's surged thanks to the Olympics is the official app for the Olympic Games.

Sounds like an easy conclusion to draw, right? But that wasn't the case during the last Olympic Games or before - even though the app has been around since 2014.

According to our App Intelligence, downloads of the official app more than doubled when compared to the previous Olympic Games back in 2021 (offset by COVID), adding nearly 11M new users since the games started at the end of July.

In comparison, the app was downloaded just 3.3M times, according to our estimates, in the same period in 2021. That's nearly 4x more people. And as you'd expect from downloads, Google Play is in the lead - and not by a small amount. There are roughly two downloads from Google Play for every download from the App Store. This wasn't the case in 2021 where the numbers were fairly even.

It's worth noting that the official app doesn't stream the games live but rather links to the regional partner that's streaming them, but does have video clips, schedules, and news. This simply reinforces the trend we've been seeing for several years now - more things are going in-app. I don't see that ending any time soon.