NBC Universal has "sold more national advertising than it did for the Beijing Olympics, topping $900 million, with more than five months to go before the London Games," according to Tripp Mickle of SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL. NBC has "already reset its final sales goal in advance of the Summer Games." The early success is "significant for NBC, which lost more than $200 million on the 2010 Vancouver Games and faced questions about whether or not it overpaid the International Olympic Committee for the rights to the 2010 and 2012 Games." NBC paid $820M for the '10 Games and will pay $1.18B for the '12 Games. NBC Sports Senior VP/Sports & Olympic Sales Seth Winter said, "We are exceptionally far ahead of any pace I can recall before. The original goal that we had for London is a goal we’ve exceeded substantially." Winter added that NBC has "surpassed its national sales total for Beijing, which was reportedly $850 million, but declined to discuss the average costs of advertising buys or the network’s ratings guarantee." Sources said that the total sales have "surpassed $900 million." Winter said that NBC is "almost done with what it calls 'sponsorship sales' to USOC and IOC partners and will move to the scatter market soon." Optimum Sports U.S. Dir Jeremy Carey said, "They’re not going to sell out of inventory because there are so many hours, especially when you add the digital and live streaming, but they’re going to hold their line with price for good reason. There’s a lot of demand out there. There’s not a ton of original programming in the summer in the marketplace, and they’re in pretty good shape." Mickle notes NBC for the first time is "not selling digital advertising as a standalone buy for the Olympics." Instead, it is "packaging its TV and digital media buys together, requiring companies to buy a certain amount of TV advertising to get digital inventory" (SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL, 2/13 issue). Winter said that the automotive category was healthy and that two carmarkers, GM and BMW, "would be the only ones advertising on NBC's Olympic broadcasts" (N.Y. TIMES, 2/13).
| CONFIRMED LONDON OLYMPICS ADVERTISERS ON NBC |
| GM* | AT&T |
| BMW | McDonald's |
| Panasonic | Procter & Gamble |
| Citi | Coca-Cola |
| TD Ameritrade | Visa |
| NOTE: * = General Motors is the only non-IOC, non-USOC sponsor. |
| |
TRACKING VIEWERS: AD AGE's Brian Steinberg reports NBC will use the Olympics to "set up a system that purports to count viewers across all the different ways they now watch their shows." The net has "enlisted Google and ComScore to analyze what is known in the industry as 'single source' consumption, or individual, unduplicated viewership patterns, across video shown via TV, mobile devices, personal computers and tablets." ComScore VP/TV Sales & Business Development Joan FitzGerald said that among the behaviors the effort "might measure are whether Olympics viewers use TVs or other devices to watch a particular event, or how fans use two devices simultaneously and in tandem to get information or video." Execs will also be "looking at how viewers share the content they see across social networks." Google will "focus on a panel of approximately 3,000 respondents, while ComScore will use a new 10,000-member panel that follows individuals as they move between TV and online venues, focusing on several hundred 'Olympic enthusiasts' who plan to follow the Games across different media venues." ComScore will "use set-top boxes, electronic meters and panelist self-reports to determine how fans experience the Olympics" (
ADAGE.com, 2/13).
