NBCU has said that expects to exceed the $1.25 billion in ad deals it secured for Rio, and the company was still selling as recently as late June.
NBC UNIVERSAL SHUTTERING ITS GAMES DIVISION TV
Overall linear-TV viewership for the 2016 Rio Games was off 18% from NBCU’s 2012 broadcast of the Summer Games from London.īut they threaten to undermine a flow of revenue upon which TV networks depend: advertising. The Super Bowl, which generates TV’s biggest single-day audience each year, has also begun to see its overall audience start to settle. The Oscars, Grammys and Golden Globes are all experiencing declines in linear viewing, as are the day-and-date broadcasts of every kind of primetime comedy and drama. The Olympics are going through the same sort of wrenching change through which other big TV mainstays are navigating. The company did not provide audience numbers for Olympic viewership on Peacock. Meanwhile, NBCU also said the streaming audience on and the NBC Sports app increased 76% compared with the opening ceremony in the Pyeongchang, South Korea, Winter Games and 72% compared with Rio. The primetime audience for Saturday’s events, including broadcast and cable, were 26% higher than viewership for the opening ceremonies - an indication that audiences are gravitating toward traditional Olympics action, like swimming and gymnastics, rather than an atypical version of the Olympics kick-off. And the Games were delayed a year from their original debut, which was supposed to take part in 2020.Īt the same time, NBCU is seeing better activity in other parts of its Olympic efforts. To be sure, these ceremonies were like few others: Due to the coronavirus pandemic, live audiences were not allowed to take part.