TV Nets Prepare To Spend Big In Bidding For Olympic Media Rights

U.S. broadcasters are "crunching a new set of numbers in anticipation of a bidding war next year" for the rights to the 2014 and 2016 Olympics, according to Matthew Futterman of the WALL STREET JOURNAL. Fox Sports Chair & Exec Producer David Hill said, "We've all stopped and reached for our calculators again." The shift comes after NBC during this summer's Beijing Olympics "rewrote the playbook for selling the Games across multiple media platforms." Broadcasters are now "trying to evaluate that audience," but they wonder if the Olympics can "generate a major revenue stream from digital advertising." Futterman notes valuing media rights "is a challenge because no one knows exactly how fans will follow the Olympics six or eight years from now." The IOC licensed Internet coverage to 187 countries this year, up from just eight for the '04 Athens Games. IOC Dir of TV & Marketing Services Timo Lumme said, "No one would have guessed sports coverage would have changed the way it did." Meanwhile, Futterman notes NBC sees the anticipated bidding war as the "welcome price of success." Fox is rumored to be interested in gaining rights for the Olympics, and ESPN Int'l Managing Dir Russell Wolff said, "We are looking at it with some real effort." However, CBS "remains the lone skeptic among major broadcasters" -- CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus "interpreted NBC's recent success as unique to Beijing and the live broadcasts of [Michael] Phelps's races" (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 9/25).