Viewership for the Rio Games may have been down from the '12 London Games, but NBC Sports Group Chair Mark Lazarus yesterday said that the "audience levels guaranteed to advertisers were met through the available ad time NBC had going into the Games," according to Stephen Battaglio of the L.A. TIMES. NBC had "promised advertisers the Games would get prime-time ratings comparable with four years ago." When it became "clear the number would fall short, advertisers received additional commercials to make sure they reached the number of viewers they paid for." Time originally "allocated for promotional spots for NBC shows were also used to give advertisers 'make good' ads." As a result, NBCU "will be able to keep all of the record-setting ad revenue that came in before the Games began." NBC execs said that the $1.2B-plus take "is a 20% lift over the London Games and will make Rio the most profitable Olympics in history." Lazarus: “Every advertiser left the games Sunday night with everything we owed them. We didn’t quite get there the way we thought we might but we got there.” Battaglio notes NBC execs "did not anticipate how many viewers would watch the thousands of hours of live coverage NBC streamed online." Lazarus: "We were surprised it grew as much as it did. Common sense tells you -- there is a percentage of them that we think would have watched it on television.” Lazarus said that about 10% of NBC’s Olympic ad sales -- which comes to around $120M -- were "for its streamed content." He noted that the percentage "will probably rise in future Olympics." Going forward, Lazarus said that NBC "will have to work on finding the right balance of live and taped Olympic events in prime time that will attract the kind of mass audiences advertisers will pay a premium to reach" (L.A. TIMES, 8/25).
