(Bloomberg) -- Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. said it signed up more streaming customers during four days of the Paris Olympics than the entire Tokyo Games.
The company, which paid €1.3 billion ($1.42 billion) for the Europe-wide TV rights over the four-year Olympic cycle that ends in 2024, saw a surge in subscribers to its Max and Discovery+ streaming services on the first Saturday of the Games, Andrew Georgiou, head of the company’s European sports business, said in an interview.
He declined to give a specific figure, but also said the total number of streaming viewers exceeded the Tokyo tally after just two days. Warner Bros. had almost 100 million streaming customers globally at the end of the first quarter.
“The time zone helps a lot,” he said of the surge in subscribers. “But I wouldn’t have expected that.”
Georgiou spoke from the Hotel Raphael in Paris, where Warner Bros. has set up five open-air studios to broadcast to 50 countries against backdrops like the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe.
The return of the Games to a historic European capital, after a decade in Japan, China, South Korea and Brazil, has generated buzz with viewers who’ve been tuning in to watch beach volleyball set against the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower and triathletes swimming in the River Seine.
Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal, which owns the US TV rights to the Games, has also seen a surge in viewing. Prime-time viewership over the first four days for NBC averaged 33.8 million, up 77% from Tokyo, underscoring the benefits of a more favorable time zone for the US.
Warner Bros. said that by day five of the Games, the viewing audience had crossed 100 million across Europe, 32% higher than for the same period at Tokyo. About 2.2 billion minutes have been streamed by subscribers, six times more than Tokyo, the company said.
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