The Sochi Olympics 2014 Opening Ceremony schedule comes on Friday and the NBC TV start time for the event will come with no live stream online for the Winter Games, as the network wants to put the full spectacle on television and the ceremonies will start in Russia at 7:30 p.m. EST and will air live on the NBC Network and comes from Sochi's Fisht Olympic Stadium and it will also be where parts of the 2018 FIFA World Cup will be held.
NBC said that they will not be streaming the opening ceremonies this time around to keep the spectacle straight for television and they will be putting on all types of live events and broadcast coverage throughout the two weeks in Russia. The games actually start on Thursday and that has the first events of the Winter Olympics, as alpine skiers and the snowboarders will start early for qualifying and preliminary competitions. Shaun White has pulled out of one of his events and now will just be in the halfpipe after also planning to participate in the new slopestyle event.
The stadium holds over 40,000 and it will be the first chance for Russia and Vladimir Putin to show how great they are to the world and while it won't be streaming live, NBC is having coverage of the entire event and comes after the London games had an amazing opening ceremony. The athletes from all the participating countries will be introduced at the event and comes just before the official kickoff. The NBC family of networks will be airing hundreds of hours of live coverage and events and they will be on MSNBC, CNBC, the USA Network and the NBC Sports Network throughout the two weeks.
The hockey and figure skating competitions are expected to be some of the most popular, while the men's slope style qualifying, women's super-combined skiing, women's slopestyle qualification and the women's moguls qualification will all start up on Thursday before the opening ceremonies. The NHL will be taking a break for the Olympics so that their players can represent their countries and there will be a freeze on trades and moves during that time.
At the last Olympics, the Canadian team defeated the United States in the hockey gold medal game and now both will be looking to get back there, while the Russian team led by Alex Ovechkin will be looking to do the same. The US games all will be airing live on TV and in the United States they will be early in the morning for the first round games, as they play against Slovakia, Russia and Slovenia and all of those will kickoff between 7 and 7:30 am ET on their respective days.
