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How to Watch the 2024 Summer Olympics Without Cable

The 2024 Paris Summer Olympics are coming soon! Check out these top-rated video streaming services for watching the games from anywhere.

 & Jordan Minor Principal Writer, Software
 & Kim Key Senior Writer, Security
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Buying Guide: How to Watch the 2024 Summer Olympics Without Cable

NBC is the home of the Olympics in the US, so you should check out your local NBC station for prime-time coverage. Your live TV streaming service probably includes NBC, since it's one of the major broadcasting channels in the US. Olympic sports will also air on CNBC, NBCSN, Olympics Channel, and USA. Peacock, NBC's movie and television streaming service, is another place to find Olympic coverage, including highlights from multiple sports on The Olympic Show. If you have a Roku device or Roku TV, you can stream all of NBC's coverage of the Olympics from the NBC Sports channel or Peacock channel. If you don't want to use a streaming service, you can also pick up NBC over the air with some effort and an antenna. 

NBCOlympics.com is another place to watch the Olympics. The website shows highlights from all 32 sports, along with the Opening and Closing Ceremonies and medal ceremonies. 

For the 2022 Winter Games, Comcast detailed various ways viewers could watch the games just by saying "Olympics" to their voice assistant. We'll see if that's still the case this summer.


The Olympic Event Schedule

The Opening Ceremony for Paris 2024 is scheduled for July 26 at 2:24 p.m. EST on NBC. The full event schedule has yet to be revealed. However, when the time comes, you can keep up with the results and medal counts, plus view complete scheduling information on NBC's Olympics website.


Cable and Over-the-Air Options

You can also watch much of the Olympic coverage with a cable plan that includes the NBCUniversal channel family. A cable plan is typically more expensive than live-streaming alternatives. Still, it's great for people who want to get the largest possible variety of cable TV networks for one price. 

Want to watch other sports? Check out our roundup of the best sports streaming services.


Watching Foreign Olympic Coverage With a VPN

In the past, NBC has come under criticism for overly talky, sometimes uninformed coverage of some Olympic events. Maybe you're looking to avoid this sort of thing, or you come from another country and want to see the coverage in your home language. You may also want to watch events that NBC doesn't cover.

Whatever the reason, your most realistic option is to stream coverage from an overseas provider, using one of our top-rated VPNs to make the platform in question think you are in the country in which it is located. There are plenty of technical and ethical issues involved in doing so, however, which we cover in our article on spoofing your location with a VPN.

About Our Experts

Jordan Minor

Jordan Minor

Principal Writer, Software

My PCMag career began in 2013 as an intern. Now, I'm a senior writer, using the skills I acquired at Northwestern University to write about dating apps, meal kits, programming software, website builders, video streaming services, and video games. I was previously a senior editor at Geek.com and have written for The A.V. Club, Kotaku, and Paste Magazine. I'm the author of the gaming history book Video Game of the Year: A Year-by-Year Guide to the Best, Boldest, and Most Bizarre Games from Every Year Since 1977, and the reason everything you know about Street Sharks is a lie.

The Technology I Use

I use the newest Android and iOS smartphones for testing, but I currently use an iPhone 14 as my personal phone. I just hate that we gave up headphone jacks.

I've always favored gaming laptops over desktops. On that note, I have a 16-inch HP Envy with an Intel Core i9-13900H CPU and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 GPU. No matter what machine I’m working on, an alarming amount of my personal and professional life revolves around cloud-synced Google Drive files.

For food subscriptions, my household sticks with CookUnity and HelloFresh for meals. Video streaming is a bit more complicated. While there are too many services to list, we're subscribed to most of the major ones. These days, I find myself drawn to HBO Max's movies and shows, as well as Peacock's reality trash.

I've been a lifelong Nintendo fan, and I sincerely believe the Nintendo Switch will go down as one of the best gaming consoles of all time. It has an unbelievable library of new and old games from Nintendo and third-party companies. The handheld/console hybrid approach makes playing games so much more flexible, a legacy that continues with the Nintendo Switch 2 and Valve’s Steam Deck.

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Kim Key

Kim Key

Senior Writer, Security

My Experience

I review privacy tools like hardware security keys, password managers, private messaging apps, and ad-blocking software. I also report on online scams and offer advice to families and individuals about staying safe on the internet. Before joining PCMag, I wrote about tech and video games for CNN, Fanbyte, Mashable, The New York Times, and TechRadar. I also worked at CNN International, where I did field producing and reporting on sports that are popular with worldwide audiences.

In addition to the categories below, I exclusively cover ad blockers, authenticator apps, hardware security keys, and private messaging apps.

The Technology I Use

I like testing new software for work, but I'm less "plugged in" to the internet than I used to be. I tend to read app privacy policies to see what kind of data companies collect, and as a result of those findings, I don't use many mobile apps. In a similar vein, I was an early adopter of many social media platforms, but now I’m just an infrequent Reddit lurker.

I'm a gear junkie. I split my work time between a 2021 Apple MacBook Pro and a Lenovo ThinkPad. I shoot most of my videos for PCMag using a Canon M50, a Sony A7iii, and a Sony a6000. I edit videos using Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Pro.

I write all of my words for PCMag either in the MS Notepad app on my ThinkPad or the Notes app on my iPhone 12 mini. If I'm traveling and working, I use my iPad to write short articles or take notes.

My dad built me my first computer sometime in the late '90s, and I used it for reading Encyclopedia Britannica and writing Sailor Moon fan fiction. My first phone was the ubiquitous Nokia candy bar.

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