Broadcaster NBC has agreed a $3bn deal to extend its coverage of the Olympic Games in the US beyond 2032, just days before the body that runs the world’s biggest sporting event elects a new president.
The agreement, announced on Thursday, includes rights to air the Salt Lake City winter games in 2034 and the summer Olympics in 2036, which do not yet have a host city.
NBC, owned by US media giant Comcast, has held exclusive rights to show the summer Olympics in the US since 1988, and is the International Olympic Committee’s most important commercial partner. The broadcaster last signed an extension in 2014, worth almost $8bn.
The new deal goes beyond media rights, and includes several new “strategic initiatives” such as “collaboration on digital advertising opportunities” and additional support from Comcast to produce and distribute media coverage of the games.
The IOC’s move to lock in its biggest contract well into the next decade comes just days before its members meet in Greece to choose a successor to Thomas Bach, the former German Olympic fencing champion who has been in charge of the body for 12 years.
The IOC gets around 60 per cent of its income from TV deals, and another 30 per cent from sponsorship. The most recent Olympic cycle that ended in Paris brought in $7.6bn, and attracted a surge in viewership.
NBC’s long term commitment to the Olympics comes with the US media market in a state of flux, as streaming companies such as Netflix, Apple and Amazon compete with traditional cable groups for the rights to show US premium sports to attract subscribers and advertisers.
Despite the pressure on broadcasters from the shift to streaming, the value of live sports rights has largely held up in the US market. Last year the National Basketball Association sealed a new 11-year agreement worth $76bn.
However, attempts by NBC rivals Disney, Fox and Warner Bros to bundle live sports such as NFL, NBA and the Fifa World Cup in a sports-focused streaming service called Venu collapsed at the start of the year. The venture was designed to target younger viewers who do not subscribe to cable TV.
NBC’s coverage of the Paris Olympics games last year drew in an average of 67mn total viewers per day across all platforms and analysts expect even larger audiences for the games in Los Angeles in 2028 — the first to take place in the US since the Winter Games in Salt Lake City in 2002.
All events in Paris were streamed in real time via NBC’s Peacock platform, which ran alongside highlight shows, attracting a record $1.2bn in advertising revenue.
