How to make the most of the Olympics on Peacock
It’s almost time for the 2024 Olympics, those special weeks when we watch the world’s best athletes go for gold (and get emotional watching their parents cheer them on). And for the first time ever, Peacock will be streaming every event live — a step up from the muddled viewing experience of the 2020 Summer Games.
With 329 medal events and over 5,000 hours of live programming planned, Peacock’s Olympic coverage can seem daunting: How can you possibly watch every highlight and event you want to see? Luckily, Peacock is offering a wide variety of viewing options and shows to ensure you get the most out of your Olympic viewing experience.
From celebrity-hosted shows to new multi-view options, here’s everything you can expect from Peacock’s Olympic coverage.
The Olympics hub
Peacock’s Olympics hub, which can be found either through the homepage or the site menu, is the streaming service’s one-stop shop for all things Olympic Games. Here, you can browse coverage by sport, watch playlists dedicated to featured athletes like Simone Biles or Katie Ledecky, and keep track of the medal count. You can also create your own personalized Olympics schedule by clicking “Olympics Schedule” and then adding events you want to watch to “My Stuff.”
Shows hosted by Kenan Thompson, Kevin Hart, Alex Cooper, and more
Peacock and NBC are going all in on celebrity commentary for these Olympic Games, with rapper Snoop Dogg joining NBC and Peacock’s Primetime in Paris, hosted by Mike Tirico. (Snoop Dogg’s reaction to equestrian dressage was one of the highlights of the 2020 Olympics.)
Peacock will also be the streaming home to other celebrity-led shows. Kevin Hart returns to host Olympic Highlights, with Kenan Thompson replacing Snoop Dogg, who served as co-host in Tokyo. At a July 11 Peacock Preview Event in NYC that Mashable attended, Thompson described Olympic Highlights as “a show hosted by two people with no Olympic experience at all,” so expect more amazed (and maybe even befuddled) reactions to the world’s greatest athletic feats.
Alex Cooper, host of podcast Call Her Daddy, will also be hosting a series of interactive watch parties, fittingly titled Watch with Alex Cooper. Cooper and guests will provide picture-in-picture commentary on some of the biggest Team USA events at the Olympics, including gymnastics, soccer, and basketball.
Rounding out Peacock’s Olympic shows is Gold Zone, which whips around Paris to deliver real-time coverage of the Summer Games. Hosted by Scott Hanson, Andrew Siciliano, Matt Iseman, and Akbar Gbajabiamila, Gold Zone will highlight the key moments happening throughout the day’s events at any given moment.
Interactive Live Actions
Shows like Gold Zone will also be the site of Peacock Live Actions, an interactive tool that lets you move between the Olympics’ many simultaneous events — sometimes up to 40 at once! As you watch Olympic coverage, Live Action prompts will pop up onscreen to take you to new livestreams of an event. Think of it as just changing the channel.
Discovery Multiview
“Switching between sports is all fine and good,” you may say, “but what if I want to watch four events at the same time?” First, I’d admire your commitment to getting as much Olympics in your eyeballs as possible. Then, I’d direct you to the Discovery Multiview tool.
Multiview is exactly what it sounds like: a viewing tool that shows four different sporting events simultaneously and offers onscreen descriptions cluing you into medal events or elimination risks.
Personalized AI-generated Daily Olympic Recaps
Generative AI arrives at the 2024 Olympics in the form of “Your Daily Olympic Recap on Peacock,” which compile personalized highlight reels based on viewer preferences. These recaps are voiced by an AI version of announcer Al Michaels, which was trained on the sportscaster’s prior NBC work with his consent. (Upon hearing a demo, Vulture said the AI voice “left much to be desired,” while Defector called it, “accurate, but not right.”)
“Your Daily Olympic Recap on Peacock” is available to Peacock subscribers starting July 27 on web browsers, as well as the Peacock app on iPhone and iPad. To get a recap, you tell Peacock your name, the sports you want to follow, and the highlights you prefer. According to NBC, up to 7 million variants of these recaps could be streamed over the duration of these Olympic Games.
The Olympic Games begin July 26. They’ll be streaming on Peacock and broadcast on NBC.