If you’re frustrated because you want to watch something specific, but your feed is full of “highlights” and “features,” then this is a guide for you. If you do want to watch all things about Katie Ledecky, Noah Lyle, or Simone Biles, then just watch go ahead and watch the network feed. They got you.
But if you would like to watch something else at the Olympics, then here’s a recommendation.
- What
- Who
- When
- How
- Watch
This cobbles together the best and brightest from Olympics.com, Wikipedia, Peacock, and a very special spreadsheet.
1: Find WHAT you want to watch.
You do have to find a sport that you’re interested in. By the way, there are 32 sports (categories of competitions) but 329 events. So you have to may have to choose both.
The best overview daily grid is at Olympics.com here: https://olympics.com/en/paris-2024/schedule/grid.
Beware – you may want to avoid the “results” view. If you click the other button, you will immediately see all results.
2: Figure out WHO you want to see.
This requires you to wade into the events. If you already know the person and the event (Katie Ledecky’s 800m, the men’s 100m, women’s basketball, then skip to #3). But suppose you want to watch Field Hockey or Surfing, and you don’t really know who’s worth watching. Try Wikipedia.
Wikipedia does a superlative job of organizing the Olympic information, with rare errors. They’re updating the info within 5-10 minutes of results, and you can see everything you need to know. Who is the best in the world, who won the previous golds, and who has played so far. It will include spoilers if the event is over, but not as a headline at the top, just down in the details. It is pure dork heaven.
You can search for “Sport X at the 2024 Summer Olympic Games” to get there most quickly. If you further look at the box on the right hand side, you can click through to further details by event, split between men and women. You can easily toggle back to prior Games. for example, Belgium, Australia, and India won the last field hockey medals for the men; Netherlands, Argentina, and G. Britain won for the women. Wikipedia showed me that all three of those prior medal winning men’s teams are in the same pool play in Paris, so that’s going to create some consternation!
I chose field hockey because I thought it would be good practice to see how an unfamiliar team works without seeing spoilers. But, of course, a few of you do know your field hockey!
3: Find WHEN the event takes place
Multiple ways to do this, but one way WITHOUT seeing spoilers is to download this guy’s spreadsheet that he created on Reddit. When it pops up, you don’t need a Reddit account, you can just close that window. Download the link that starts with “onedrive.” I don’t want to put it directly here because I had issues with it conflicting with my files.
https://www.reddit.com/r/olympics/comments/1dyx1jz/schedule_for_of_the_2024_olympic_games/
I haven’t found any viruses or errors in it, so far. If it makes you uncomfortable, you can email or ping me (FB), I’ll send you mine. The problem with the NBC, Olympics, or newspaper schedules is that they’re incomplete, and they aren’t telling you the times.
I recommend you go to the Reddit link, while on a secure link, then download to your device. Then save a copy with your name and delete the other one. If you poke around the comments, there are people also suggesting how to use search to find what you known, and you can excel ninja to your heart’s content. I’ve started going in and marking Team USA where I want to watch them. You could hide all the sports you don’t care about.
So, if you want to watch Belgium and Australia go at it on the men’s field hockey side, you look up the Hockey tab, and find that on July 30th at 1945 Paris time, the “red panthers” (or whatever Belgium calls itself) goes up against the Aussies.
You probably want to figure out the difference between Paris time and your time, too. In northern California,it’s nine hours, so that means they’ll play at 10:45 my time. Six hours in Florida, seven hours in Texas and Minnesota, eight hours in Denver.
4. Find HOW best to watch
NBC/ Peacock has the live coverage in the US. If you pay for Peacock Premium, you can choose what you want or watch any replace. If you don’t, you can watch NBC feeds on multiple channels: E, CNBC, NBC, or NBC Sports. Personally, at $6 for Premium and $12 for Premium with fewer ads, it’s worth it to a fan to lean into the full package for the Games.
You can also look at NBCOlympics.com to find full replays (you might need to turn your ad blocker off).
But it’s not immediately easy to find what you want.
First, there is a schedule by day here, by country and by sport
https://olympics.com/en/paris-2024/where-to-watch-olympic-games-live
I’m also seeing that NBCOlympics.com does have some replay feeds. They seem to come up very slowly and in a disorganized fashion. On the plus side, you wouldn’t need to pay; lots of ads and interruptions and some events may take minutes to load.
If you do get Peacock, it’s a bit of a mess of “highlights” across the top and all this “Featured” pre-digested content. Mostly the same people repeated. But if you know what you’re looking for? Scroll to the big button that says ALL Sports on the left. Then poke the button! The sports next to the button are NOT alphabetized.
But if you poke the button, they are:
https://www.peacocktv.com/watch/2024-paris-olympics
There are a few reasons to go this way instead of through the network channel on TV or in the evening. First, if it’s not a sport where the US does well or is famous for some other reason according to NBC, it won’t be on the channel at all. Ain’t going to be no field hockey on CNBC. Secondly, with the time change, some live sports will be shown later on the network, but with cameras only on a few athletes and a few events. If you watch THAT event live (even, say, women’s gymnastics), you will see quality commentary and everything that happens. If you even watch it as a Replay in the same day, it will be an improvement over whatever they show in prime time.
If you watch at night, they will show people walking around the sidelines rather than other competitors on the events taking place at that time, and they will compress everything to the very end, sometimes even cutting off what happens. In the last two Games, NBC cut off the medal ceremonies; none of the events were live, so this was a choice.
5: Watch.
Cheer. Cringe. Cry. Shake your head in disbelief. Pound the table. Pray to your gods. What’s next?
