In 2009, two years before he would step away from the business, NBCUniversal’s Dick Ebersol went on stage to accept an honor at the Sports Emmy Awards in New York.
Waiting for him on stage were six commissioners representing the biggest sports leagues in the country: the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, NASCAR and PGA Tour. It’s hard to get those six executives in the same city, much less the same room, at the same time.
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Dick Ebersol made his biggest mark producing the Olympic Games broadcasts for NBC Sports.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
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Each commissioner delivered remarks praising Ebersol, an executive who was still working in TV sports at the time as chairman of NBC Sports and Olympics. The moment, which also included legendary boxer Muhammad Ali presenting Ebersol’s award, was striking and illustrated the scope of the longtime broadcaster’s influence in the business.
A lion of the broadcast television industry from the late 1960s to his retirement in 2011, Ebersol is the recipient of the SportsBusiness Journal/Daily Lifetime Achievement Award for 2015.
Ebersol will be celebrated during the Sports Business Awards on May 20 in New York City.
For nearly five decades, Ebersol produced the country’s biggest sporting events — Super Bowls, the World Series and the NBA Finals.
Ebersol, though, is best known for his association with the Olympic Games, a relationship that started with the 1968 Olympics. As a sophomore at Yale, Ebersol left school to work as a researcher for Roone Arledge, the legendary television executive with whom Ebersol developed a close bond.
Ebersol’s task was to travel around, meet athletes and learn their stories. It was during those years that Ebersol learned the storytelling talents that have become a hallmark of his Olympic productions.
Ebersol left sports and the Olympics behind when he joined NBC in 1974. During the ensuing 15 years, he developed some of the best-known shows in U.S. television history. Notably, he helped create “Saturday Night Live,” a show that’s still a staple of NBC’s late-night programming schedule today. Ebersol also launched a production company that created well-known shows like “Friday Night Videos” and “Later with Bob Costas.”
He eventually moved over to run NBC Sports in 1989 and immediately got to work furthering league relationships through deals signed with the NFL, NBA and MLB.
But it was his return to producing the Olympics in 1992 where he made his biggest mark. Following the Barcelona Games, he conducted an interview with The New York Times in August 1992. In that story, Ebersol was “boasting of raves from ABC’s Arledge and Jim McKay” over NBC’s coverage of the Games. The Times quoted Ebersol as saying, “The whole world came. There were no incidents. We did a great job of storytelling.”
Ebersol’s strategy utilized taped segments to tell stories of Olympic athletes who were not household names in the U.S. The theory is that the stories would help viewers get invested in the athletes and drive tune-in. Olympic ratings under Ebersol’s direction were huge for two decades, and other networks used that storytelling philosophy for other big events, such as the World Cup.
Ebersol’s deep relationships in sports business came into play when NBC picked up the rights to broadcast the NFL’s “Sunday Night Football,” starting in 2006. The series became television’s top rated prime-time show from 2011-14.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell referenced the deal on that Sports Emmy stage in 2009. “When we lost Dick Ebersol as a partner, that was a huge loss for the NFL,” he said at the time. “I couldn’t be happier that he’s back.”
Ebersol’s life and career will be chronicled in the May 18-24 issue of SportsBusiness Journal.
