General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt said Tuesday that NBC Universal will lose an estimated $200 million on the February Olympics. GE is "counting on having tough economics around the Olympics," Immelt said.
via MediaPost
NBC Universal To Take Major Loss On Winter Olympics
Categories: TV Sports Ratings & News
how? Tens of millions will be watching the olympics, how the heck do they plan to lose $200,000,000?
On a side-note, I personally find the winter olympics way more interesting than the summer olympics.
Ouch! NBC can’t catch a break! I blame management… It’s all that bad karma they caught when they cancelled My Name Is Earl.
Ouch
@johnthemon, Probably because they paid so much to get the broadcast rights and, if I recall correctly, they were having some issues selling the ad time.
I am assuming that this has to do with the previous article that stated that they were having a tough time selling all of the advertising slots for the Winter Games.
It sounds to me like we will be seeing a lot of in-network advertising throughout the Winter Games. In all honesty, if they decide to replace the unsold slots with advertising for their shows it couldn’t hurt their network. Any exposure to an audience much larger than their average has got to be a plus.
The Winter Olympics just aren’t the big deal the Summer games are.
Chuck Tranberg, The Winter Olympics just aren’t the big deal the Summer games are.
By what standard? Your personal interest level?
It’s hard to make perfect comparisons of ratings because they’re in different years and location matters a lot, but in general recent Winter Olympics seem to have out-rated recent Summer Olympics on television.
Wow. It’s weird to think how the Winter Olympics could be watched nightly by 20 million people and lose $200,000,000 while Jay Leno is watched typically by about 5 million each night and could potentially make $300,000,000 (albeit over the course of an entire year).
Wimnter’s popularity is based upon the figure skating. Summer has a few more sports to fall back on. Many of you can’t understand how they can lose money – look at how much NBC is paying for these games
In past Winter Olympics, Figure Skating was one of the big attractions to tune in for especially since there was one or more Americans in contention for the gold. This year, there aren’t any and I wouldn’t be surprised if no Americans even medaled. Maybe some advertisers saw that and decided to stay away.
I hate articles and statements like that. Yes, they will lose $200 million on the Games but they get a huge advertising platform for their own shows. It’s NBC’s fault their shows suck and no amount of advertising will help them.
NBC has the top program in broadcast primetime — Sunday Night Football — and haven’t be able to do anything with it. NBC is a lost cause.
I’d be surprised if an American female figure skater medaled. The team did so poorly at the 2009 world championship, the nation’s allotment dropped from three to two for the 2010 season including the Olympics. I could see Belbin and Agosto medaling again in the ice dance and an American male skater earning a medal. Not optimistic in the pairs.
The Winter Olympics involve various forms of skiing, sledding and skating plus biathlon shooting. The Summer Games offer a lot more variety (although NBC generally focuses on a handful of sports).
The biggest problem is the inability to sell ads for enough cash to offset the rights fee paid to the IOC. If I remember correctly, 2010 is the last year of NBC’s Olympic contract. ABC/ESPN will fight hard for the 2012 Games and beyond.
From what I can find, NBC paid something north of $2 billion dollars to broadcast the Olympics in Vancouver and London (2010 Winter and 2012 Summer, respectively), a big jump from the previous pair (that appears to be about $1.5 billion or so for Turin, Italy, and Bejing, China).
I guess I can see the estimated revenue losses in advance of the games. Still, I take the estimate above as a guess (educated though it may be) since things could change either way (ads sell out, ads languish, ads cancelled, ratings tank, ratings soak, Jeffster scares everyone out of the Olympic village in a wacko promo for Chuck) so who knows? Until the numbers are added up in March or April, it’s educated speculation.
Huh, the last 11 Olympics in a row, an American woman medaled. At the last World Championships, they got 5th and 11th place. It’s possible they’ll medal, but this is the main thing I like to watch. Hmm.
And there’s no American Hero who looks to get a million medals like Phelps.
I wonder how this will come into play with the next contract negotiations for the 2014 and 2016 games. Wonder if NBCU can forego the 2014 Winter and still go after 2016?
Evan Lysacek needs to kneecap Evgeni Plushenko. That’ll drive up interest and bring in the advertising bucks!
Poor NCB
Bill Gorman: “…in general recent Winter Olympics seem to have out-rated recent Summer Olympics on television.”
That’s a stretch. You’re right in saying that location plays a role in the ratings. But the last Summer Olympics in the U.S. (Atlanta) delivered higher ratings than the last Winter Olympics here (Salt Lake City). And I think if you average the last 3 Olympics for each, the ratings are almost identical — but the Winter Olympics include a U.S. location.
But in addition to location — it’s really the presence of notable U.S. athletes that drive the ratings. This was certainly the case in Beijing; NBC’s ratings were significantly affected by the presence of Michael Phelps.
And remember the whole Nancy Kerrigan/Tonya Harding saga? The 1994 figure skating finals in Lillehammer featuring these two fine ladies was one of the most watched broadcasts in TV history – with more than 45 million viewers.
In any event, I think NBC is probably pretty worried about the ratings for 2010. The ratings for 2006 (Turin) were the lowest ever recorded. I’m sure they’re hopeful that ratings won’t be this low for Vancouver, but it’s not unthinkable.
We’ll see…
eric, you are correct that Atlanta (1996) (average HH rating of 14.5) outrated Salt Lake (avg. HH rating of 12.6), but I was doing comparisons of comparable year Winter and Summer Olympics and Lillehammer (1994) (avg. rating of 16.9) crushed Atlanta
As for the general “Winter is better” trend, every single Winter Olympics from 1968-2004 (sadly I don’t have 2006 data) outrated the 2000 and 2004 Summer Olympics (Although the 2008 Summer Olympics beat 7 of the 10 Winter Olympics ), most by wide margins.
I stick with my conclusion that while results are widely variable, Winter Olympics seem to have a ratings edge vs. Summer.
As for 2010, it’s hard to be certain whether Vancouver will get a big “time zone benefit” or not. Was Salt Lake’s US ratings benefit more its time zone or its US location?
Caveat: None of my historical data contains adult demo ratings, sadly.
NBC only lost $50 million on the Triplecast.
I love the Winter Olympics, but if I end up watching less this year it will be because, as a resident of the west coast and therefore a second-class citizen when it comes to live TV events other than the Oscars, I will be watching the big events on a three-hour delay, which pisses me off to no end. With the results all over other news and the Internet, it’s extremely hard to avoid the results.
I can understand NBC wanting to air the big events in prime time, but for godssake, they own a gazillion cable channels. Can’t they run the events live on, say, Universal HD or Bravo, and then show them again later on NBC? Let the west coast when it wants to! Especially for the events on the weekends, when I’m more likely to be home at 5 pm than 8 pm anyway.