With 108 days to go before the Olympic cauldron is lit in Paris, NBC Sports has locked in a near-record $1.2 billion in advertising commitments—and orders continue to pour in. According to NBC sales exec Dan Lovinger, the 2024 Summer Games is “on track to generate the most ad revenue in Olympic history,” which suggests that the Comcast-owned media giant is on pace to rake in more than $1.25 billion in sales.
“We are highly confident that we will set a new record in revenue,” said Lovinger, who serves as president of Olympic & Paralympic partnerships at NBCUniversal. The exec went on to say that NBCU’s summer haul has been supercharged by an “unquestioned resurgence of interest” in the event, which is rebounding from the impact of a global pandemic that delayed the Tokyo Games for a full year.
Despite the malaise surrounding the most recent summer quadrennial, NBCU set a sales record in Japan three years ago.
Some $350 million worth of Paris inventory was snapped up by first-time Olympics advertisers, Lovinger said. The sales boss also noted that the opening and closing ceremonies are now completely sold out, across all linear-TV and digital platforms, while halftime spots in team sports such as basketball and soccer are going fast.
A key selling point this time around was NBCU’s new “Prime Pods” offering, a baker’s dozen of exclusive primetime windows that provide sponsors with the opportunity to own a half-hour of nightly Olympics coverage. Lovinger’s team first went to market with the 13 Prime Pods about a year ago, and while NBCU did not identify the brands that bought into the clutter-free segments, it’s likely that deep-pocketed official Olympics sponsors such as Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Toyota and Visa would be among the takers.
In addition to the more favorable temporal gap between Paris and New York, NBC’s deliveries are expected to be enhanced by a more aggressive streaming strategy. For the first time, all live events will be available to stream via Peacock, which now boasts over 31 million subscribers—a 55% improvement compared to where things stood during the Tokyo Games.
Among the categories that have helped move the sales needle in Paris are retail, financial services, consumer packaged goods and entertainment. Meanwhile, fans of gymnastics, swimming, track and other sports should be spared much of the overt political messaging that clots up the airwaves during an election cycle, as the vast majority of those buys are transacted at the local level.
In other words, Paris should prove to be a largely nonpartisan event. “We really intend for these Games to be red, white and blue, [and] not red or blue,” Lovinger said.
NBC is in the thick of a $7.75 billion rights contract with the International Olympics Committee, a deal set to run through 2032.