In 2016 there were hundreds of articles about how to watch the Olympics on VPNs because of how bad the coverage was.

At least 32% of Americans use VPNs, and 3/4 Americans know what VPNs are. https://www.security.org/resources/vpn-consumer-report-annual/. Funny enough this survey admits that the stats will be underreported because the survey platform doesn’t allow VPN usage. That 3/10 number actually comes up a lot in the rest of the data around Olympic viewership.

7 in 10 “Canadians” watched the 2024 Olympics. https://mediaincanada.com/2024/08/13/record-breaking-digital-audiences-for-cbc-olympic-coverage/

6 in 10 “Brits” watched the Olympics https://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/articles/c86l33xy7x0o

35% of the French population watched. That was the HOST country! https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2024/08/06/whether-viewership-or-terabits-the-paris-olympic-games-are-breaking-records_6710415_19.html

Less than 1 in 11 Americans watched the Olympics https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradadgate/2024/08/13/the-paris-olympics-averaged-306-million-viewers-across-nbcu-platforms/

Even though Americans watch vastly more television. https://www.admtv.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/2024_egta_gtvg_tv_consumption-Final.pdf and sports.

• https://us.myprotein.com/thezone/motivation/we-reveal-the-worlds-sportiest-countries-which-nation-will-take-first-place/

124 million Americans watched the Super Bowl https://www.nielsen.com/news-center/2024/super-bowl-lviii-draws-123-7-million-average-viewers-largest-tv-audience-on-record/

What’s more likely: the host country watched 50% less Olympics than two English speaking countries, and watched 3x as much Olympics as the US? Or is it more likely that Americans are using other English nations broadcasts to watch the Olympics rather than watching their home country broadcast?

The viewership of the Olympics in the US should be pretty much in line with the Superbowl, 120+ million viewers, since 1 the superbowl is a single sport, and 2. more people care globally about the Olympics than any other sport. So the US is “missing” almost 100 million US viewers of the Olympics.

More than 40% of the US adult population had planned on watching those Olympics (it’s actually more than 60% but I made sure to err towards the group that said “likely to watch” rather than the 30% that said they “will not watch”), 80% of the US is adults, that’s 108 million people.

• https://news.gallup.com/file/poll/647774/240725Olympics.pdf

• https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/AGE295224#AGE295224

Literally every statistic points to the fact that Americans use VPNs to watch the Olympics abroad more than they watch the home broadcast. American VPN usage lines up with these numbers, and nearby English countries’ numbers are much higher than they should be.

Obviously, only that tiny percentage of the population "care". Not sure what they care about, but they care.