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The 2021 Summer Olympics are here! And one of the fantastic moments of any Games is the Opening Ceremony. It’s where a sold-out stadium full of fans celebrates the home city and country kicking off 16 days of competition, even though it actually started two days ago.
In the 68,000 seat Tokyo Olympic Stadium, 10,000 diplomats, foreign dignitaries, Olympic sponsors, members of the IOC and their proxies for bribes will be there to watch it in person because of COVID-19 limits. The athletes themselves will also march into the stadium, but the rest of us will be there only via the international television feed that tends to have quite the American-slanted camera feeds.
And because NBC pays more than anyone else for this thing, that means you get the lingering shots of Team USA, rest of the planet. Merica!
This year NBC has two ways to watch the pomp and circumstance due to Tokyo being 13 hours ahead Eastern Time. The Opening Ceremony will be live Friday morning starting at 6:55 a.m. ET, and then again in primetime Friday evening in the US starting at 7:30 p.m. Both NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports mobile app will both offer streaming coverage too, but you’ll need a cable subscription for access.
But the 6:55 a.m. live broadcast will feature TODAY anchors discussing the festivities and run until 11 a.m. So if you’ve ever wanted to hear Craig Melvin discuss why Liechtenstein is a country or Hoda Kotb opine on the dominance of Malaysian athletes in badminton, well congratulations, your big day is here.
And if you’re not around for either the 6:55 a.m. or 7:30 p.m. broadcasts, NBC will offer an overnight replay from 12:35 a.m. to 5 a.m. Saturday morning. So there’s three chances to watch something in full you can get all the best parts of on Instagram or Twitter in five minutes. Hooray!