I love the Olympics. I would conservatively say over the course of each Games, I watch seventy or eighty hours of coverage. As a big sports guy and a big pop culture moments guy, I’m the exact target demographic. NBC/ Peacock, for the most part, does a good job with coverage. They put a lot of effort and production into taking it seriously, but even so, I need to loudly complain about one thing that’s driving me crazy.
The Peacock app has an entire section for the Olympics, which is terrific and once again, shows how much the powers that be care. Even better, you can go into the Olympics section and browse by the sport you want to watch. Unfortunately, everything figure skating related only stays up the following day before it’s deleted off the app. So, if you go in there right now, as an example, you won’t see any of the short programs from the team competition. They’re all gone and won’t be returning.
Peacock released a statement outlining the specifics of the policy. There was no mention of the reasons, but the assumption is it’s related to possible copyright concerns. NBC was sued after the last Olympics because it hosted footage of a figure skating performance that contained “House Of The Rising Sun” in the background, and it’s understandable why they wouldn’t want to go down that road again.
That being said, we need to figure this nonsense out. Everyone associated with the Olympics and figure skating should want to make it as easy as possible to watch. NBC, as a company literally selling streaming subscriptions and advertising slots connected to the programming, should want to make it as easy as possible to watch. In addition, anyone having their music used during an Olympic program should be honored.
There’s already an extensive copyright process that has been put into place in order to get the music approved for the performances. It seems to me that copyrighting process should include permission for videos of the performances to stay up at least through the actual duration of the Games.
From my vantage point on the ice, figure skating is the star of the Winter Olympics. Yeah, there are some buzzy sports, but there’s a reason why Tara Lipinski is still famous almost thirty years after she won her gold medal. If we want to grow the Olympics, we need to amplify these athletes and the amazing things they do as widely as possible, which starts with figure skating and its availability.
I’m not blaming NBC and Peacock. I get it’s complicated, but I only have so much time in the day. I usually get around to watching the frontrunners in the key figure skating events, but later in the week, I want to go back and watch what I missed. It’s driving me crazy that, despite having NBC and subscribing to the most expensive Peacock tier, I can’t do that. I’m not the only one either. A lot of fans are loudly complaining about that and some are even saying they’re using VPNs to watch.
It’s time to all get in the same room and figure this out. It’s probably too late to solve the problem for 2026, but I don’t want this to be an issue four years from now when the Winter Olympics returns. NBC does too many other things right. It has good announcers that know the sports, some of whom are really fun personalities too. It uses great camera angles and has fun behind the scenes stories. Now it just needs to solve the availability issue.
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