NBC Olympics 2024 playbook has so far paid off

Comcast NBCUniversal has been betting on the Olympics for years, but this summer the company poured all its resources into the games, particularly in an effort to drive viewership for its growing streaming platform Peacock.

So far, it seems to be working: More than 30 million people have Tuned The games were viewed on NBC television and streaming platforms, generating a record $1.2 billion in advertising revenue.

NBC executives have touted the Olympics as a growth driver and differentiator amid growing competition from streaming and live sports, but they are now looking to extend the benefits beyond the Olympics to future live sports.

“We completely changed our game plan internally. We threw out the playbook two years ago,” said Jenny Storms, NBCUniversal’s chief marketing officer for entertainment and sports. “It was very scary at the time to throw out years of institutional knowledge and start over. We really started everything new and fresh, from production to our counterparts across the company.”

The Olympics have long been key for NBCUniversal: Paris was the 18th Olympics NBC has broadcast in the U.S. Updated It acquired Olympic rights in 2014 and agreed to pay $7.65 billion to host the games from 2022 to 2032, which amounts to more than $1.2 billion per Games.

Those efforts failed on the eve of the Paris Games, with the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and the 2022 Beijing Olympics drawing the smallest attendances ever for the Summer and Winter Games, respectively.

Storms noted that factors outside of NBCUniversal’s control played a role in the past two Olympics.

Both events were gripped by the early stages of the pandemic — Tokyo was postponed for a year, fans and families were not allowed to attend either event — and the time difference with Asia also worked against U.S. broadcasting.

Notably, however, Peacock’s strategy during these Olympics appears to have been its biggest misstep: In Tokyo, very few events were available to live stream on Peacock, and in Beijing, while there was live content, fans had a hard time finding something to watch.

“Peacock made a point of being a home for the Olympics, but it didn’t work out as expected,” said Mark Lazarus, chairman of NBCUniversal Media Group. “There was uncertainty about how much content to put on there, how to program it, how to cross-deliver it.” [with traditional TV]And, rightly so, our fans told us that we didn’t deliver on what we promised.”

Company executives credit Paris with part of the success of this year’s Olympics, thanks to eye-catching views like the opening ceremony on the Seine River and beach volleyball in front of the Eiffel Tower, as well as favorable time slots that worked to NBC’s advantage.

Storms said the company started promoting the Olympics much earlier this time around, hiring various divisions of NBCUniversal to promote it, from news programs and talk shows to various advertising formats.

Storms and Lazarus both pointed to the success of broadcasting Olympic qualifiers a few weeks before the Games.

“We’ve never really promoted a trial before,” Storms said, “but this was the most streamed trial ever, and it was important to us to get America excited.”

And there were some in-house stars from NBCUniversal.

The company has been more strategic about using its own talent in 2024, executives said. In addition to airing promotions for its content, NBC’s A-list stars have been integrated into the events themselves, co-hosting or reporting from the sidelines. Fan favorite and NBC Olympics special correspondent Snoop Dogg has been a key member of the network, co-hosting the event and reporting from the sidelines. It generated buzz on social media, driving attention to his live events, and his high-profile presence in Paris also helped promote his upcoming role on NBC’s “The Voice” this fall.

Other NBC talent also attended the Olympics to promote the project. Mariska Hargitay, who has played Olivia Benson on “Law & Order: SVU” since 1999, was in Paris to promote the project. The show’s 26th During the season, I covered surfing in Tahiti. Early Exit Due to health issues.

NBC and Peacock programming was also promoted at the Olympics, and Universal’s upcoming film “Wicked” was featured heavily, with stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo making an appearance on the opening ceremony red carpet.

Wicked actors also appeared in promotional videos for American gymnast Simone Biles, and the Today show in Paris aired an exclusive clip from the film. NBC said that polling showed that moviegoers “got a lot of attention across the board during the Olympics, doubling top-of-mind awareness and increasing overall awareness.”

Anne Estimation During the first week of the Summer Olympics, 2.8 million consumers signed up for Peacock, averaging about 400,000 per day, according to data provider Antenna. That’s roughly comparable to the number of subscribers for the NFL Wild Card Game, which Peacock exclusively streamed in January, according to Antenna. The game was the most-streamed live event in history, with 27.6 million viewers, according to Nielsen.

Comcast recently reported that Peacock had 33 million paying customers as of June 30, down 500,000 from the previous quarter, mostly due to customers who lost their subscriptions after the wild-card games. But MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett said the customers who stayed after the wild-card games were also noteworthy.

“I think we’ll have the same experience with the Olympics,” Moffett said. “Obviously, some customers will leave, but I think in the end a lot more will stay.”

Still, traditional TV made up the majority of viewership for Paris, with about 90% of viewers tuning in on broadcast and cable, Lazarus said. Because of the time slot, NBC showed the games live on TV and Peacock during the day, and then rebranded its evening coverage as “Primetime in Paris,” where it played replays of the big events with sidecar shows and interviews.

Executives said the strategy adopted in Paris will set a roadmap for future Olympics, such as the Milan Winter Olympics in 2026 and the Los Angeles Summer Olympics in 2028, as well as other sports broadcast on NBC’s television networks and Peacock.

The 2024 Olympics will be followed immediately by new seasons for English Premier League soccer, American college football and the National Football League. NBC will also hold the rights to National Basketball Association games from the 2025-2026 season.

“As we’ve seen with the Olympics, I think Peacock is becoming much more sophisticated in the way they cover sports,” said Shirin Malkani, co-chair of Perkins Coie’s sports industry group.

Disclosure: CNBC’s parent company, NBCUniversal, owns NBC Sports and NBC Olympics, which holds the U.S. broadcast rights to all Summer and Winter Olympic Games through 2032.