Milan-Cortina 2026: Record-Breaking Games for the French Team… and for Viewership
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In this issue, Isabelle Maurice, Director of Research, Monitoring, and Forecasting, and Valentine de Planta, Senior Research Analyst, share their analysis of the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics: broadcasters’ performance, the most-watched sports, and consumer behavior during the Games. For two weeks, the competitions drew TV Viewers to a wide range of channels and platforms.
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From February 6 to 22, 2026, the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics demonstrated the ability of major sporting events to bring together a broad audience audience The set of listeners, viewers, or TV viewers in which each individual is equally weighted, regardless of their listening/viewing duration or frequency of contact. Find out more . Boosted by the absence of a time difference, the athletes’ exceptional performances, and massive media coverage coverage The audience accumulation over a long period (week, month, etc.) This is the number or percentage of people having had at least one contact, of any duration, with the media studied during the time period. It is calculated based on continuous panels. Find out more , the competition drew 55.3 million French viewers. Beyond television viewership, this edition also illustrates the evolution of Audience Measurement Audience Measurement Quantitative study of the frequency of use of media. Find out more : home internet screens and out-of-home consumption now fully contribute to the scale of the phenomenon.
A record viewership for the Winter Games
With 55.3 million French people in contact with the Games, the Milan-Cortina edition achieved unprecedented coverage for the Winter Games.
This performance can in fact be partly attributed to the context: unlike the 2022 Beijing Games, the absence of a time difference allowed the competitions to be broadcast broadcast A mode of transmission whereby a transmitter sends the same audio and video stream to many receivers within a coverage area. In the context of computer networks, broadcast mode is contrasted with “multicast” and “unicast” modes, which respectively refer to the transmission of a stream to a given group of recipient devices and to a single recipient device. OR : Putting a show or a programme on television or radio. This term refers to a programme that is broadcast live as opposed to on-demand. Find out more during time slots that were particularly convenient for the French audience audience The set of listeners, viewers, or TV viewers in which each individual is equally weighted, regardless of their listening/viewing duration or frequency of contact. Find out more .
The Games’ viewership momentum was largely driven by the exceptional performances of French athletes. With 23 medals won, France set a historic record for the Winter Olympics.
In total, 20 French athletes stood on the podium, across 7 different disciplines, helping to ensure a continuous French presence throughout the two-week event and strengthening TV Viewers’ engagement with the competitions.
In this context, the editorial coverage coverage The audience accumulation over a long period (week, month, etc.) This is the number or percentage of people having had at least one contact, of any duration, with the media studied during the time period. It is calculated based on continuous panels. Find out more also played a key role. The Games benefited from very extensive daily coverage, with more than 15 hours of live coverage per day on the France Télévisions group’s channels and all sessions on the Digital channel France TV sport. 865 hours of competition were broadcast on the two Eurosport channels as well as on Eurosport.fr, the Eurosport app, and HBO Max , which covered the entire competition, providing continuous exposure for the various disciplines.
Out of home Out of home Since 30 March 2020, for individuals aged 15 years and older, Médiamat has included the audience of television programmes viewed outside the home and whilst on the move on television sets, computers, smartphones and tablets. This includes, for example, audience viewing with relatives or friends, or else in a second home, hotel, holiday rental, workplace, bar, restaurant, train station, airport, public place, car, train, bus, etc. Find out more and Internet Screens: A Broader Audience Audience The set of listeners, viewers, or TV viewers in which each individual is equally weighted, regardless of their listening/viewing duration or frequency of contact. Find out more
One of the key features of this edition is the expansion of the Audience Measurement Audience Measurement Quantitative study of the frequency of use of media. Find out more scope.
The results now include:
- internet screens at home,
- households without a television,
- out of home viewing.
These trends show that viewership of major events is now part of a hybrid consumption ecosystem, combining television, Streaming Streaming A technical method of digitally transmitting data to enable the playback of a continuous flow of video and audio material. Unlike terrestrial or satellite TV broadcasting, this technology requires a two-way network (internet) to send periodic requests to the streaming server in order to receive video or audio micro-files. Find out more , and group viewing out of home.
On average, 1.1 million TV Viewers engaged with the competition outside their homes each day.
Biathlon and Nordic disciplines dominate viewership
The highest viewership was recorded for the spectacular biathlon mass-start event, highlighted by the one-two finish by Océane Michelon and Julia Simon, which drew 5.5 million TV Viewers and a 46.3% audience share audience share The audience share, or market share of an event (programme, advertising slot, channel, station, etc.) is the ratio of the average audience for that event and the average audience for the media over the same time slot. This gives an indicator of the relative performance of a channel or station relative to their competitors. Find out more on February 21 on France 2.
Several other competitions also drew more than 4 million TV Viewers, including:
- the biathlon mixed relay,
- figure skating
- as well as certain cross-country skiing events
These sports accounted for a large portion of the competition’s highest viewership.
An event that continues to shape the television landscape
Non-competition editorial highlights also contributed significantly to the Games’ overall performance. The opening ceremony attracted 6.1 million TV Viewers and achieved a 36.1% audience share, while the closing ceremony drew 4.8 million viewers (25.9% audience share), confirming their role as unifying moments capable of reaching a broader
audience
audience
The set of listeners, viewers, or TV viewers in which each individual is equally weighted, regardless of their listening/viewing duration or frequency of contact.
Find out more
than the sporting events alone.
Broadcasted daily between 11 p.m. and midnight, the magazine show “JO Club” also established itself as a recognizable fixture of the two-week Olympic period, with 1.4 million TV Viewers on average, helping to sustain audience momentum around the Games and build viewer retention.
The Milan-Cortina Games illustrate the enduring ability of major sporting events to unite a massive audience around national champions in a fragmented media landscape.
The success of Milan-Cortina is based on the synergy between linear linear This is when a live television program is watched exactly at the time it airs, in timeshifting (control over live TV) or private delay (personal recording). Find out more broadcasting on major networks, expansion to digital digital A signal is said to be digital if it can be represented by a series of discrete values that can be coded in binary as either 0 or 1. It is the opposite of analogue signal. Digital broadcasting has become the primary mode for television broadcasting, whether by cable, satellite, or even terrestrial. Find out more screens, and the contribution of the out-of-home audience, which reinforces the event’s collective dimension.
Against the backdrop of increasingly diverse media consumption patterns, the Olympic Games thus reaffirm their status as a major audiovisual event, capable of bringing together tens of millions of French people, regardless of the screen or viewing location.
Publication Director: Médiamétrie Communications Team
Written by: Laure Osmanian Molinero
Source: Médiamétrie - Individuals aged 4 and older, All of France – Audience to date