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2016 Rio Olympics Opening Ceremony: How, When, And Where To Watch On TV And Live-Stream

By Danny Cox
Published on: 11:33 PST, Aug 4, 2016

The 2016 Rio Olympics are set to kick off and everyone from around the world is going to want to watch the opening ceremony. On Friday, August 5, 2016, the opening ceremony will take place as all of the athletes walk into Maracana Stadium to officially get things underway in Rio de Janeiro. Below is the full schedule for Friday night’s big event and how to watch everything on TV as well as on live-stream.

More than 11,000 of the greatest athletes the world has to offer will be present from 205 different countries and are ready to compete. Brazil is bringing in countless more people to help organize the Olympics and to simply sit back and cheer on their home country.

The XXXI Olympic Games are the first to ever be held in South America, and you won’t want to miss any of them. In order to do that, though, you need to know when to watch, what to watch, and how you can watch all of them.

It all starts with the opening ceremony, and it’s going to be a big one in Brazil.

When – Friday, August 5, 2016

This is when the opening ceremony will take place and the Olympics are set to last through August 21, 2016, Sunday. Some of the opening round games in the soccer tournament began on Wednesday, so a few of those are already out of the way.

Time and How/Where To Watch

This is where things may get a big confusing and you’re pretty much going to have to check your local listings around the world for your time. As for those in the United States, there will be some different start times happening with the opening ceremony on NBC as reported by the L.A. Times.

Yes, the Olympics opening ceremony will air on NBC at these times domestically:

  • 8 p.m. – Eastern and Pacific
  • 7 p.m. – Central and Mountain

The opening ceremony will start at 8 p.m. local time and will be delayed one hour for the Eastern and Central time zones. In the Mountain time zone, it will be delayed two hours and then four hours in the Pacific time zone.

A number of options around the world will be made available to live-stream the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Here are just some of them:

Watching on a live-stream is a way for those in the United States to catch the opening ceremony without the tape delay, but those last few options could cause problems. In order to watch those live-stream services outside of their host country, one would need a VPN, and Quartz has more on how all that works.

However, Quartz also warns about possible legal implications of using a VPN.

“…know that using a VPN to circumvent geoblocking exists in a legal gray area. Strictly speaking, using a VPN is not itself illegal, but it may violate a network’s terms of use, and some broadcasters have argued it also violates copyright laws.”

How long is it? Who will be there? What is it?

The opening ceremony of the 2016 Rio Olympics is expected to last about four hours, and all of the athletes and coaches in the games will be there. Each will walk out with their respective country’s athletes and wave to the crowd as their way of officially entering the games.

The opening ceremony will officially get things underway for the 2016 Rio Olympics, and there are a number of ways to watch. It’s going to be what the thousands and thousands of athletes and millions around the world have been waiting for, and there will be a number of ways to watch. Make sure to catch all the happenings on TV, or if you can’t get to one, then make sure to live-stream the Olympics online so you don’t miss a second.

[Photo by Buda Mendes/Getty Images]

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