The Olympics highlights deal NBC struck with ESPN lasted for all of two days.
Sources on both sides say their deal broke down over advertising restrictions around the Olympic programming that ESPN saw as too onerous. As part of the deal, NBC told ESPN that it was not allowed to sell advertising on ESPN.com specifically tied to Olympic highlight videos. Two days into the deal, NBC clarified that ESPN could not have advertising anywhere on a webpage that featured Olympic video — terms that ESPN felt would have put its existing ad commitments in jeopardy.
“We were pleased with the partnership, but there were advertising conflicts which prevented us from continuing it,” NBC said in an emailed statement. ESPN emailed with a similar sounding statement: “Even though both sides were committed, we couldn't make it work given specific requirements. Our extensive television and digital coverage of Rio 2016 continues as planned.”
The original deal was unusual in the first place in that it involved two sometimes bitter rivals. In exchange for referring web traffic to NBC Olympics’ live streams, ESPN picked up 10 45-second Olympic highlights per day. Now, NBC does not get the referral traffic from ESPN.com and ESPN does not get the highlight rights.
NBC still has highlight deals in place with digital media companies like BuzzFeed, Facebook/Instagram, Google/YouTube and Yahoo.
