Why USA Women’s Hockey Drove NBC’s Milan Cortina Primetime Coverage

If you want a snapshot of how uneven sports media coverage still is, you do not have to look far. Decades of research show women’s sports remain marginalized in day-to-day highlights and sports news, often receiving only a sliver of coverage compared to men. Yet, the Olympics keep doing something that regular-season sport coverage still struggles to do consistently. Olympic coverage has consistently treated women’s events like must-watch primetime programming for several decades.

A new report, Women’s Sports Lead NBC’s Primetime Milan Cortina Olympic Television Broadcast Coverage By Narrow Margin, shows women’s sports received more primetime coverage than men’s sports. Across NBC’s primetime broadcasts, women’s sports accounted for 42.43% of the coverage compared to 41.33% for men, with 16.24% devoted to mixed events. When mixed events are excluded, women’s sports held a narrow majority with 50.65% of coverage compared to 49.35% for men.

Over 18 nights of Olympic coverage, women’s sports received 20 minutes and 28 seconds more primetime airtime than men’s sports. Men led after 10 nights, the gap was erased by Night 15, and women stayed ahead the rest of the way. The bigger headline is the pattern. Milan Cortina marked the sixth consecutive Olympiad in which women’s sports led NBC’s primetime Olympic coverage, and the seventh time in eight Games overall.

USA women’s hockey offered the clearest proof of what happens when women’s sports are treated like the main event in primetime. The USA–Canada gold medal game on Feb. 19 became a signature moment of Milan Cortina, averaging 5.3 million viewers across USA Network and Peacock and peaking at 7.7 million during overtime as the United States won gold. It is now the most-watched women’s hockey game ever, topping the comparable Olympic finals from 2022 and 2018.

Paul J. MacArthur, a co-author of the report noted, “NBC’s primetime Olympic broadcast remains an outlier. It is the rare case where women’s sports are prioritized on one of a network’s most valuable primetime properties.” That “outlier” point matters because the U.S. media conversation is loud right now about what gets treated as serious sport, what gets dismissed, and who gets respected. USA Hockey is trending for reasons that have very little to do with on-ice performance and everything to do with how women’s accomplishments get handled in public. At the same time, the Olympics quietly keep producing the opposite of those harmful sentiments throughout their primetime coverage decisions, which may also be implicitly threatening to men who seek to protect their dominance across the industry.

Regardless of whether people are more or less comfortable with women athletes taking center stage during primetime Olympic competition, the results speak for themselves. NBC’s overall Milan Cortina coverage drew 24.1 million average daily viewers making it the most-watched Winter Olympics since the 2014 Sochi Games.

Olympic Primetime Coverage And Nationalism

Primetime Olympic coverage often provides women’s sports with a rare level of elevated visibility, and MacArthur provided a few likely reasons. “Women’s sports receive significant coverage during the primetime broadcast of the Olympic Games because of who NBC sees as its target audience and, of course, nationalism.” He also connected today’s coverage patterns to earlier programming choices. “First, in the 1990s, NBC adopted the strategy of targeting its primetime Olympic broadcasts towards women. Part of that programming strategy has included emphasizing women’s sports.”

MacArthur also tied Olympic airtime to Team USA storylines. “Second, nationalism is part and parcel of the Olympic product. NBC airs American success stories when it can and Team USA women have delivered more of them of late,” he said. Though he cautioned against treating medals as a simple rule for who gets shown most. “The medal count is not a perfect predictor of exposure as marquee sports like figure skating, alpine skiing and snowboarding will get coverage regardless of Team USA’s performance, but American success stories can buoy airtime.”

Star power and storytelling also matter. “Two other factors that can drive coverage are which athletes have compelling storylines and who has some celebrity going into the Games,” MacArthur said. “Mikaela Shiffrin had both and she was guaranteed airtime no matter how she performed this year.” The schedule can push totals in one direction too. “The coverage of women’s sports during the Winter Games typically surges during the last week of NBC’s primetime Olympic broadcast,” he said, because “Women’s figure skating takes place during the final week, while men’s figure skating typically concludes before the last week begins.”

Women Athlete’s Have Built Stronger Brands

Women athletes have also changed the way brands and broadcasters think about “value,” and it shows up in the choices NBC makes when it builds a primetime Olympic show. The old assumption was that men’s sports come with the safest audience, so men should get the best windows. Women athletes have been chipping away at that logic for years by building individual brands that are harder to manufacture simply through media coverage alone. Women athletes excel at building relationships and trust as they make fans feel like they know them. These less superficial levels of connection with fans and consumers naturally carries over during the most anticipated events.

Women athletes were forced into being intentional about visibility. Many of them did not have the same guaranteed earning potential or the free marketing and promotional opportunities and media pipelines that men athletes have historically benefited from. Women athletes have largely had to learn how to create their own personal brands. To accomplish this, we see women athletes show up across all social platforms, speaking directly to fans, and ensuring that their public presence is not limited to game day.

Some of the most successful women’s sports partnerships have come from companies that treated women athletes like smart business from the start rather than as a “charitable” process. That truly is the lesson of women’s NIL growth, and it is also the lesson of Olympic primetime. NBC had every incentive to lean into athletes who already bring built-in storylines and strong fan connection, because this is what keeps a primetime broadcast moving. Women athletes have gotten very good at that part, and the Milan Cortina Olympic coverage numbers provide even more evidence of the power of that reality.