The Comcast-owned company edged out rivals Fox and ESPN to secure coverage of the 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2020 Games after the three parties submitted sealed bids to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Lausanne, Switzerland. NBC, which has carried every Summer Olympics since 1988 and every Winter Games since 2002, paid around $2 billion for the rights to the 2010 and 2012 Olympics nine years ago.
The network was successful in its the tender despite the untimely recent departure of Games programming chief Dick Ebersol, who had overseen eight successful Olympic bids. The 2014 Winter Games will take place in Sochi and the 2016 Summer Olympics will be staged in Rio de Janeiro, but the host cities of the 2018 and 2020 editions have not yet been decided. “In the end we were most impressed with NBC Universal, which not only has a track record for broadcasting the Games that speaks for itself, but also has a clear and innovative vision of where it wants to take the broadcast of the Games between now and 2020,” said IOC president Jacques Rogge.
IOC chief rights negotiator Richard Carrión added: “We assessed each bid against a thorough set of criteria and believe that the long-term nature of this agreement will not only ensure fantastic Olympic broadcast coverage in the US, but also support the long-term financial stability of the Olympic Movement as a whole.” Carrion said NBC would pay $775 million for the 2014 Games, $1.226 billion for the 2016 Olympics, $963 million for the 2018 Games and $1.418 billion for the 2020 Olympics. NBC’s rights cover all media platforms.
It has been reported that NBC’s bid was worth around $800 million more than Fox’s offer for the four-Games package, while ESPN’s bid for the 2014 and 2016 Games was $1.4 billion, according to The Associated Press. “It was very strategically important to have a long relationship and have four more Games and not just two. It was a big part of our strategy,” said Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts in a conference call.
Fox Sports Media Group chairman David Hill said in a statement: “We congratulate NBC/Comcast and would like to thank President Rogge...for giving us the opportunity to participate in the process, demonstrating how Fox Sports would produce the Olympic Games, provide wide distribution, the largest marketing platform ever and an economic package we believed to be good for the IOC and News Corp.” An ESPN statement added: “We made a disciplined bid that would have brought tremendous value to the Olympics and would have been profitable for our company. To go any further would not have made good business sense for us.”
