The best way to watch the Paris Olympics? Hint: It isn't live.
Get your flags, your cheers and your nerves ready: the 2024 Paris Olympic Games have begun.
After a very soggy musical opening ceremony on Friday, the competitions officially began on Saturday with all the drama, the close calls, the heartbreak and the joy that comes when the best of the best compete on the world stage. Simone Biles made a triumphant return! Flavor Flav cheered on the U.S. women's water polo team! Novak Djokovic beat Rafael Nadal! And that's just the first three days.
But as all the highs and lows of sporting events return this year, so does the biannual struggle to figure out how to watch every athlete and medal ceremony. The problem is all in the timing; Paris is six hours ahead of U.S. Eastern time, and nine ahead of the Pacific time zone. So when Biles took to the gymnastics arena for a superb qualifying performance, it was 5:40 a.m. on the East coast.
If you set an alarm to tune in, I certainly commend you. But it's not exactly easy to catch every event you may want to watch, especially during the work week. Contests are held in the middle of the night, early in the morning and at midday for American viewers. When they don't take place is during primetime on our side of the Atlantic, which is why, when you turn on NBC's "Primetime in Paris" at 8 EDT/PDT, you'll find a recap of the biggest events of the day emceed by Mike Tirico, often with interviews with families of athletes, NBC "correspondents" like Colin Jost and a whole lot of commercial breaks.
Waking up early or suffering through NBC's overly produced segments are all well and good ways to get your Olympic fix, but the best way to watch these events isn't live or on NBC's official primetime broadcast. It's actually the low-key, full-length replays available on its Peacock streaming service.
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If you're a Peacock subscriber and you scroll over to the Olympics hub in the app on your TV, laptop, iPad or mobile phone, you'll find a whole lot of options for watching the Games, including highlight reels, livestreams and full replays. These replays are long and commercial free. They often have different commentators than you'll find in the live events on NBC or their affiliated cable networks (USA, E!, CNBC and Golf Channel).
These commentators speak less and offer more insight, often because they assume a more expert audience is watching. And while many Americans are particularly interested in Team USA, the live and replay broadcasts on NBC often are so USA-centric you might forget anyone else is competing. The official replays simply show the events as they happened. Biles gets the same airtime as any other gymnast from the U.S., Romania, Japan or any other country.
In this way, I was able to enjoy all of the women's gymnastics qualifying rounds on Sunday, hours after they happened, skipping ahead through the slow moments, and see the entire gymnastic field. You appreciate Biles' dominance in the sport all the more by watching gymnasts from all walks of life compete on the uneven bars and balance beam.
The big drawback here is you have to be a paying Peacock subscriber (starts at $7.99/month) to enjoy these replays. But if you do have Peacock (even just for a few weeks to watch the Olympics), the replays are a surprisingly great way to enjoy the Games. If you can't tune in live anyway, you might as well get to watch without commercials, annoying commentators or interjections from Jost talking about why he's a bad surfer.
I watch the Olympics for the hardworking athletes, not for "Saturday Night Live" bits.