Watching and Streaming Guide for Rio Summer Olympics

Fri Aug 05, 2016 21:41:43PM

Rio de Janeiro's Maracana Stadium, home of the 2016 Olympic Opening & Closing ceremoniesBy: Daniel Basil

To watch or stream any Rio Olympic event or sport, you're covered with this entry. Included is a full breakdown of all the NBC Universal TV and Online Streaming options.

TV Viewing Options

Local Channels and Digital Antenna Availability

NBC and Telemundo will be the only local channels airing some the Olympic events, but not all. You will get the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, and many popular sporting events (usually the most sought after airings, like the medalings and the USA vs whoever prime-time games) for swimming, gymnastics, track and field, diving, beach volleyball, indoor volleyball, and the men's and women's basketball finals.

As long as you either have a cable package with local channels included, or you have a digital TV tuner, you will be able to watch either NBC or Telemundo Olympic aired games for no cost. For all other events, see more options just below...

Cable Channels and Other Misc Options

The NBC Universal family of channels will be airing as much of the Olympics on TV as they possibly can, it seems. And they will be doing so over 11 different channels, 9 of which require cable packages to get onto your TV. But if you do have cable, here's the channels to look for, and the corresponding sports they will carry on their network:

Bravo - exclusive home of all Olympic tennis.

CNBC - elimination round basketball and volleyball, as well as archery, beach volleyball, cycling, rugby, water polo, wrestling, and other misc sports,. Full TV schedule for just CNBC.

Golf Channel - home of all the Olympic golfing events, including highlights and recap coverage a plenty.

MSNBC - Men's basketball, beach volleyball, rugby, soccer, volleyball, water polo, and misc. Full TV schedule for just the MSNBC channel.

NBCSN - In addition to basketball and soccer, coverage will include track and field, archery, boxing, cycling, fencing, field hockey, judo, open water swimming, rugby, shooting, soccer, synchronized swimming, table tennis, weightlifting, wrestling and more. Full TV Schedule of just the NBCSN channel.

Telemundo and NBC Universo -

Per the official Rio site, the coverage of both of these channels is quite extensive for Spanish speaking audiences:

TELEMUNDO and NBC UNIVERSO, the home of the Olympics in Spanish in the United States, will present 273.5 hours of coverage, the most extensive Olympic coverage in the history of U.S. Spanish-language television, and 100 hours more than London 2012 (173.5).

The network’s unprecedented coverage from Rio de Janeiro will begin with women’s soccer on Wednesday, August 3, two days before the Opening Ceremony, and run through August 21.

To complement this extensive coverage and in line with their characteristic storytelling tradition and style, both networks will present stories and reports focusing on Olympic athletes from Latin America and the United States, following them as they compete in their respective events.

One of the main highlights of TELEMUNDO and NBC UNIVERSO’s coverage will be the performance of the Mexican men’s soccer team, which will be defending the historic gold medal it won four years ago in London.


USA Network - Women's soccer, men's basketball, beach volleyball, cycling, rowing, sync swimming, volleyball, water polo, and more. Full TV Schedule of just the USA Network channel.

Specality Channels -

NBC Universal will have two specialty channels for both Soccer and Basketball. Per the Rio official description:

NBC Olympics will provide NBCUniversal distribution partners with two Olympic specialty channels – one each for basketball and soccer. The specialty channels will focus 779 hours of content solely on each of their respective sports nearly every day of the Games. The soccer channel begins programming on Wednesday, August 3, two days prior to the Opening Ceremony, with women’s soccer coverage. The basketball channel begins its coverage on Saturday, August 6.


Online Streaming Options

NBC Sports Network Live

NBCSN is the best option you have for any and (almost) every single event happening at the Olympics in Rio. Seriously, I have scoured the internet, and put a lot of time into Olympics scheduling, and they really do have what I would say is about 98% of all events streaming on their site.

Just log in with cable username and password and enjoy. Of course, you can always use a friends/family members login, if you are a cable cutter, like myself.

Cable Cutter Options: Sling TV

Sling TV offers a free trial, and is only $19/month afterward, a small price to pay to be able to stream most every cable channel airing Olympic events. Plus you can get Sling on a ton of smart/internet devices, including your PC, MAC, laptop, mobile phone, or smart TV.

Hope all that helps. Include more links, options, etc in the comment below if you happen across any that I left out. Enjoy the Rio Olympics.

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