Context: The XXV Winter Olympic Games began in Italy on February 6, 2026. A total of 92 countries from around the world are participating. The national teams of Belarus and Russia were not permitted to compete. However, 20 so-called neutral athletes — 13 Russians and seven Belarusians — will participate in the Games. They will not be representing a particular country.
Radio-Minsk’s Vecherni politicheski kanal show criticized the Olympic Games, which are being held in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, this year. Presenters Alena Rodovskaya and Kirill Kazakov, along with their guest, Aliaksandr Pastalouski, the deputy director for scientific work at the Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, concluded that there is “absolutely unfair competition” and that Russian and Belarusian athletes are under pressure. They also said that these athletes’ non-participation “left Western athletes without real competition.” According to Pastalouski, all of this was reflected in the Olympic Games’ popularity.
“For a while now, the Olympics have not been about sports anymore. It’s just politics and a way to settle scores. It’s obvious that both audiences are shrinking, and fans aren’t paying as much attention to these competitions,” Pastalouski said on the February 11, 2026 broadcast.
Since the Olympics will last until February 22, it is not yet possible to say how many spectators will attend the entire competition. Nevertheless, one can compare the number of people who attended the opening ceremonies in different years. The opening of the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan drew a crowd of 61,000 spectators. Organizers said all the tickets had been sold.
The opening ceremony of the last Winter Olympics — in Beijing in 2022 — attracted 25,000 spectators. However, the Games took place amid the constraints of the ongoing pandemic.
According to The Guardian, the PyeongChang stadium, which seats 35,000, had an audience fill rate of around 95 percent in 2018. In other words, about 33,000 people attended. The opening ceremony in Sochi in 2014 attracted about 40,000 spectators. These data show that this year’s opening ceremony was the most popular in the past two decades, second only to the Vancouver ceremony, which had 61,600 spectators.
Online viewing of the Milan Winter Olympics has also set records. On February 11, the sixth day of the Games, Warner Bros. Discovery, the official European media partner of the Olympics, reported that its platforms alone accounted for 39% more hours of recorded viewing than at the same stage of the Beijing Olympics. In terms of live-streaming viewership, the current Games are ahead of both the 2022 Beijing Games and the 2018 PyeongChang Games.