Many fans have asked what time the Sochi Opening Ceremonies start for the Winter Olympics in 2014 and while the event is on Friday on NBC from Russia, it will be on TV at 7:30 pm ET, but actually will start around 11 am ET from Fisht Olympic Stadium and there will be no live stream from the NBCOlympics.com website and instead it will be shown on tape delay to boost the numbers for the television ratings.
The Sochi Olympics have already been a disaster and the opening ceremonies will be a way for Russian officials and the corrupt IOC to deflect from that for a few hours and the event will be live on NBC starting up at 7:30 pm ET and in true Russian fashion, the actual Olympics have already started before the opening ceremonies have even took place. NBCUniversal came out with news that they would not be live streaming the opening a while back and the main reason was to keep things focused on the spectacle and the "pageantry" of the event, but everyone really knows why, as the network wants to inflate the ratings for that landmark event as much as possible.
The time difference also plays a factor, as the actual opening will be going down at 11 am ET and surely media personnel and the athletes themselves will be tweeting along, and of course, any savvy internet user can figure out a way to watch the stream illegally. Lauer, Meredith Vieira and Bob Costas will handle the event as hosts and it will go from 7:30 pm ET until 11:30 pm ET and the event will air on BBC Two in England. The event also is not being live streamed because the network wants to provide context for the nationalistic event and for the athlete's introductions, which would not be done on the live stream coverage.
Apart from the opening ceremonies, NBC has a record amount of events and live coverage that will be streamed online and while that may give the network a hit in primetime ratings, their online presence should get a huge boost. The network is airing basically every event live online and the family of NBC networks will get in on the action as well, as the USA Network, MSNBC, CNBC and the NBC Sports Network will handle hundreds of hours of coverage and competitive events.
NBCUniversal overall has 1,500 hours of live coverage and now the network will forego its usual practice of keeping everything for primetime, which is what they did for London in the summer Olympics in 2012. NBC will basically have primetime events every night starting up at 8 pm and they also will have late night coverage and the weekend will also have events on the network. The NBC channel also has the gold medal hockey game, while the other primary events will be on the NBC Sports Network.
Figure skating, alpine skiing, snowboarding, freestyle skiing, speedskating and hockey are considered the prime events and the NBC Sports Network has some of that coverage, including live figure skating, numerous hockey games as well as cross country skiing. The snowboarding is expected to be one of the best draws and while the new slopestyle event has lost Shaun White, he will still be participating in the halfpipe, where he has won gold two Olympics in a row and is looking for a third after winning in Vancouver and Turin.
Check here for the NBC schedule for the opening ceremonies and the Olympics TV coverage.
