Olympic sport that is anticipated & watched most in USA

Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson (the Mountain) begs to differ.

 

Next year looking forward to the trampoline shootless skydive. But there may only be one competitive entry. And he may or not make it.

 

I mis-read that as trampoline shooting skydive and it still made sense.

 

"Even" swimming. Gotta love it...

Seriously though, why is NBC so fixated on showing swimming endlessly? Will it lessen now that Phelps is retired? Because I couldn't possibly find it more boring to watch.

I think Gymnastics has to be the most-anticipated, or at least NBC thinks it is, because of the way they lay out their prime-time programming.

During the Gymnastics team finals and individual all-around, here's what they did every night:

• Lead off with first half of gymnastics
• play swimming for 2 hours
• finish off with the conclusion of the gymnastics.

...but it's all on tape delay, so why would you bookend coverage with one event, unless you're afraid people wouldn't bother tuning in to the stuff in the middle?

Then the Gymnastics event finals role around and it goes like this:

• We're here at the beginning of our primetime coverage! Watch Simone Biles compete for her next gold medal! But first, other stuff.
• Those gymnastics are coming up soon!
• Commercial break.
• Before we get to those gymnastics... MORE OTHER STUFF.
• Gymnastics SOON.
• OTHER STUFF!!!
• Last hour finally gets to the gymnastics.

Drives me nuts, because yeah, I think Gymnastics is incredibly interesting to watch (I particularly like watching balance beam & still rings myself). I also like beach volleyball okay. Track & field is good as well, though the downside with short-sprint events is there's a lot of waiting/setup for like 12 seconds of payoff.

The fixation on swimming I just won't ever understand. Sooooo boring.

 

Trick question. People don't get excited about the Olympics in the US.

 

you go HARRRD

 

just use the NBC Olympics App and watch whatever and whenever you want without all the crap commercials

 

I don't understand why gymnastics is so popular. Is it some holdover from the cold war?

The commentators cannot even come close to predicting the scores or explain the discrepancies. Fair enough if I can't but when experts can't the entire thing reeks of BS.

 

Women, same reason figure skating is so popular and same reason Drake/Kardashians are as popular as they are.

 

I like gymnastics, basketball, and fighting sports. Races of any variety seem boring to me, they essentially take one part of other sports, and then measure that one part. Like there is running in basketball, but there is a ton of other stuff too that is more interesting that people tune in to watch, like shooting and defense. Track says let's ignore that stuff and focus purely on the running bit. Would you watch basketball if they took away the ball and just had the people run up and down the court? I wouldn't. Races are good measures of pure specialized athleticism, but if they just showed the last 5 seconds of each race all in a row, would you really be missing out of much?

 

America's dominance in the sport has led it to be slotted prime-time. Throw in the fact that we have the greatest Olympian ever competing for the last time, so yeah, the swimming portion is "live." I live on the East Coast, and by the time I get home, gymnastics is generally already over. The swimming events are live, so that is why they show the gymnastics around it. That would support the idea that it is one of the most popular events, because most other events only get highlights thrown in during prime time coverage, but gymnastics essentially show the whole event, albeit chopped a bit. Its funny if you imagine it is still real time and some poor Chinese gymnast was waiting an hour just to get on the balance beam.

 

Also fencing is legit! They are essentially dueling in high-tech armor, armed with high-tech rapiers on a Tron-like stage that lights up their color if they win!

 

Once we got the best coach of probably the best athlete of all time in the sport, of course gymnastics was the most popular. I don't think track and field needs to be "nuanced" between blacks and non-blacks, it's probably what most people think about when they think of the Olympics, so they'll watch it in large numbers as well.

 

It is also weird to tape delay something and have the results plastered in headlines all over your splash page.

A big problem I have this Olympics is while the stream is working fine and I have figured out the clunky navigation, to FIND the video I want to watch I have to scroll past 5 articles telling me the result of the ping pong match.

As they are never on TV it is impossible to watch spoiler free.

 

Doesn't work unless you pay for cable, which I don't. I care about the Olympics, but not enough to sign up for cable for a month to watch all of it. So I'm stuck with the broadcast coverage.

 

It's pretty sad that the Paralympics have only sold 12% of tickets to all their Paralympic events.

This...after London was near sell-outs to all their events.

http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/16/new...dex.html?iid=ob_homepage_deskrecommended_pool

 

Final weightlifting event on now. Time for the big boys, lol

http://www.stream2watch.co/live-now...-olympic-games-rio-2016-live-stream-august-16

 

The female demographic drives the TV ratings for Gymnastics and Figure Skating. They will always get prime placement. All about TV ratings and the female audience is very loyal.