By Sheila Dang

PARIS (Reuters) – The opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games drew 28.6 million viewers in the United States on Saturday, according to preliminary data from NBCUniversal, a Comcast subsidiary that called it the most-watched start to a Summer Games since the 2012 London Games.

Friday saw a ceremony during which delegations of athletes floated down the Seine River, past the monuments of Paris, and saw singer Celine Dion perform for the first time in years in public.

It is a key broadcast event for NBCUniversal, which paid $7.65 billion to extend U.S. broadcast rights to the Games through 2032. NBCUniversal’s media rights deal for the Olympics is the largest in the world.

The number of viewers, which includes NBC stations and streaming service Peacock, is a substantial plus for the broadcaster compared with just 17 million viewers for the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.

Both the Tokyo and Beijing 2022 Olympic Games took place in a challenging time zone for American audiences and were affected by the pandemic.

Ahead of the Paris Olympics, NBCUniversal was vocal about its plans to bring viewers back to the event. During the broadcast, singer Beyoncé introduced Team USA in a video that aired just before the American athletes took to the river, as one of several stars to take part in NBCUniversal’s coverage of the Olympics.

It will also exploit artificial intelligence technology in its reporting, including reproducing the voice of sports commentator Al Michaels.