When Brazilian marathon runner Vanderlei de Lima lit the torch in Rio on Friday, "it marked the latest chapter in NBC's decades-long bet on the commercial success of the Olympic Games," according to Anna Nicolaou of the FINANCIAL TIMES. The media group paid $7.8B "to extend its deal" to broadcast the Olympics until '32. For TV companies like NBC, "keen to dismiss pessimism over their future, the stakes for blockbuster events such as the Olympics have scarcely been higher." The network said that it has already sold a record $1.2B in advertising -- 20% more than final revenues from the 2012 London Games, "even as television audiences have shrunk by a third since then." NBC Ad Sales VP Seth Winter said that more than three-quarters of sales for Rio came from primetime TV buys, which had “gone up a bit” versus London "thanks to expectations for higher ratings." Bill Day of Frank N Magid associates, which consults to broadcasters, said, "The value to ad buyers is much higher than it was four years ago. It's hard to find those massive bulks of consumers anywhere, let alone in a dedicated time-defined space." However, analysts are skeptical that "the boosts from events like the Olympics can thwart the tide of cord-cutting, falling cable audiences and declining advertising revenues" (FT, 8/7).
NOT-SO-LIVE COVERAGE: The BBC reported viewers in the U.S. had to "make do with not-so-live coverage of Rio's Olympic opening ceremony, and many were not happy about it." NBC decided to show the ceremony at prime time in all time zones -- "meaning that audiences on the east coast saw it with an hour's delay, while those on the west coast had to wait for four hours after the ceremony had started before coverage began." NBC responded to online criticism "by saying that its team needed time to edit the ceremony and put it into context" for viewers in the U.S. But for many, the non-live coverage "sat uncomfortably with the fact that they could follow news and updates in real time online." The New York Times has "hinted that perhaps the decision to delay the coverage was commercial," as more viewers joined for its "nakedly promotional introductory half hour" (BBC, 8/6).
