Americans are historically uninterested in watching the Olympics this year

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published 5 August 2016

Perhaps it's all the talk about the Zika virus or maybe it's all the hubbub over the U.S. presidential election, but not many Americans are planning on making the effort to watch the Olympics this year. In what marks a first in Gallup's 16 years of polling on the topic, Americans are almost "evenly split" over whether or not they'll tune in for the Olympics, Gallup reported.

Forty-eight percent of Americans said they're planning to tune in a "great deal" or a "fair amount," while 51 percent said they're going to tune in "not much" or "none at all." That's a steep drop-off from viewership for the 2012 Olympic Games in London, when 59 percent of people planned to tune in, compared to just 41 percent of uninterested viewers.