How NBC found the golden touch for the 2024 Paris Olympics

In the early hours of the first full day of NBC’s coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics, Gold Zone was trending.

In a conversation on Saturday morning with Awful Announcing, NBC’s Senior Vice President of Olympics and Paralympics Production Amy Rosenfeld admitted that her heart skipped a beat.

“Very early on four hours into the first show, somebody said to me, ‘Gold Zone is trending.’ When you work in sports media, trending is never a good thing,” Rosenfeld jokingly said.

But sports fans weren’t flocking to social media to complain about Gold Zone and the fact that it was yet another thing behind the paywall at Peacock; rather they were amazed at the transcendent experience of being able to finally have the ideal Olympic viewing experience with seemingly every sport and every medal at their fingertips.

In its first year on the Peacock platform, Gold Zone has been a runaway hit. And the acceptance of Gold Zone and the unleashing of streaming’s full potential has been a watershed moment for the entire industry .

It’s also symbolic of the comeback of the Olympics as a cultural event.

After years of declining interest and ratings, surviving the pandemic and postponements , Rosenfeld admitted that there were doubts at NBC whether the Olympics were still something of consequence.

“Ultimately there was big concern whether the Olympics still mattered,” Rosenfeld said. “Do the Olympics resonate in a media landscape that is not all gathering around a TV to watch four hours of long-form programming? Especially to a younger demographic that didn’t care about it at all. Can you get people to be excited about sports you see once every four years?”

One of the biggest challenges for NBC over the years has been discerning how to evolve with the streaming revolution and slicing and dicing their coverage. Between various cable and broadcast networks, live events, and tape delay, and preserving their best content for the lucrative primetime audience it’s been a nearly impossible task. Coming into the 2024 Paris Olympics, how could NBC change course to find the best way to deliver Olympic content balancing the needs of hardcore live fans and primetime casuals?

A vision change was necessary. For the Paris Olympics, NBC would give everything to fans live while repurposing their primetime show as “Primetime in Paris” with a heavier influence on storytelling, entertainment, and pop culture. When Snoop Dogg was named as part of NBC’s primetime coverage, it may have raised some eyebrows. But in becoming Team USA’s #1 fan , it’s provided the perfect platform to rethink how the Olympics could be covered. Rosenfeld credits NBC’s Olympic Executive Producer Molly Solomon in leading that transformation.

“By the time primetime was airing, everything in the host country was done. Once everybody knew the results, would they come back to experience it again? And they have. Molly’s concept from the beginning was to advance the story and utilize new technologies, increased access, and to maybe not try to be so serious 24 hours a day. Humor is okay. We have a great reverence for the Olympics but it’s okay to have a little fun. Molly really pushed on Snoop Dogg and there were skeptics. Snoop Dogg works because he genuinely loves the Olympics, nothing is scripted.”

How much does Snoop Dogg love the Olympics? Rosenfeld shared a story that Snoop went to the US Track & Field trials on his own, even wanting to try out the pole vault for himself. If there’s one thing we ask for the 2026 Olympics it’s to get Snoop Dogg involved in curling somehow.

Instead of an “either-or” strategy for these Olympics, NBC’s approach is to offer fans a “both-and” in holding nothing back. And it is paying huge dividends; the Olympics are everywhere on television, streaming, and social media as everyone is able to enjoy all the biggest events and biggest moments in real-time.

“I give Molly and Rick Cordella and Mark Lazarus so much credit for moving the meter in putting everything out there,” Rosenfeld remarked. “No embargoing of video. In 2024, this idea that you hold back something was nonsensical. You embrace it. Here’s everything, and our goal is to provide something for everyone and to make it consumable and put it on a platform that is accessible for people.”

That accessibility has come largely through Peacock and Gold Zone, where every sport is available both live and on replay no matter the time or place. Navigability was a huge factor in advancing coverage of this year’s Olympics. No longer were viewers dependent on a matrix of channel guides, apps, and websites. Now there was a one-stop shop on Peacock for all Olympic content in addition to what was happening on linear networks.

Rosenfeld is running the point on Gold Zone from NBC’s Stamford headquarters. The veteran sports producer came to NBC in 2022 after many years at ESPN, where she was the driving force behind Bristol’s acclaimed World Cup and international soccer coverage. Her impact on the presentation of soccer is so well-respected and influential that she was honored earlier this year by the National Soccer Hall of Fame . It’s no surprise that with Rosenfeld on board helping to steer the ship, the 2024 Olympic coverage has also taken similar steps forward.

Rosenfeld is quick to credit the vast team of researchers as the “secret sauce” that makes the Gold Zone coverage possible, as well as Solomon for her vision and leadership in leading the entire Olympic effort from NBC’s Stamford headquarters.

“The core team that works on the Olympics full-time at NBC is 50 people,” Rosenfeld declared. “Then you bring in 3,000 and you have to impart all that information on this huge group in a short period of time. But the quality of team has always been a point of emphasis in my career. I think that is the secret sauce for Gold Zone, how close that team is, how they gel, and how it’s all for one and one for all.”

“These events are not for the faint of heart. I certainly participated in some challenging and rewarding World Cup productions. This is so infinitely more difficult because you’re not dealing with just one sport. How do you find the best archery analyst and what are the rules of canoe slalom? At this stage of my career, to still have new experiences and still be learning things, that’s pretty impactful.”

That team includes NFL RedZone aficionado Scott Hanson for the first time . With Gold Zone being bigger and better than ever, NBC was determined to hire Hanson for the Olympics. That effort included a meeting in California, where Rosenfeld, Solomon, and the NBC team tried to sell Hanson — who has mastered the whip-around show in one sport on NFL Sundays — to try it out for 40 sports for the Paris Olympics. And it required a bit of a leap of faith for everyone involved.

“I vividly remember sitting at a table with Scott Hanson and Molly and a few others in California and trying to convince Scott to do this. Scott is such a perfectionist; that’s what makes him great. He had a great deal of trepidation about how you can possibly do this. Quite frankly, I’m trying to convince him it’s going to be okay, and I wasn’t sure it was going to be okay,” Rosenfeld recalled.

Hanson has held down the anchor leg on the Gold Zone relay each day, taking the baton from fellow RedZone legend Andrew Siciliano, Matt Iseman, and Jac Collinsworth. All of the hosts have done as good of a job as humanly possible in sharing the stories of thousands of athletes and hundreds of events, thanks to the vast support network behind them. And Gold Zone has turned out to be better than okay; it’s played a central role in NBC’s Olympic renaissance .

Although it’s new to scores of American Olympic fans, Gold Zone has actually been around for several Olympic cycles, first debuting in the 2014 Winter Olympics. The difference this year that has made it a cultural phenomenon is its accessibility and availability. Instead of being tucked away on the NBC website or app, it’s front and center on Peacock all day, every day. That simple and effective messaging has made a huge difference as well. Rosenfeld shared that legacy affiliate deals (this is the first Olympics without NBCSN, for example) restricted just how much content Gold Zone could show in past years.

“The difference here is that with those guardrails removed, people just crave the opening of the fire hydrant,” Rosenfeld said enthusiastically. “People are savvy enough to deal with incredible volume, and they want control. They want to be their own producers. They want to consume in a way that they are creating their experience.”

“I feel comforted that maybe we fulfilled Molly’s original mantra. Molly is such a fan of the Olympics, which is an important quality to have when you run the whole thing. She wanted to have people recognize how special these events are that don’t get visibility. Could there be an outlet that exposes these sports that don’t make it into primetime, and could we make Olympic fans again because they gravitated towards archery or canoe slalom?”

“Our goal was to super-serve everything that was important. If we did our job, the audience could sit back, grab the popcorn, and do nothing but have the Olympics wash over them.”

Do the Olympics still matter? Americans have answered “yes” in a resounding way. Olympic viewership has soared this year from the record lows of Tokyo. NBC says through 14 days that viewership numbers are up 77% over three years ago in their 2-5 p.m. ET coverage and the traditional primetime window is reaching 31.6 million viewers. Peacock has seen 20 billion streaming minutes, more than every previous Olympics combined. Although ratings measurements are hard to compare now that streaming and out-of-home viewership numbers are involved, it’s impossible to argue against the fact that the 2024 Paris Olympics have been a huge success across the board for broadcasters and viewers alike. The Olympics are back.

In looking back on these Paris Olympics, and looking ahead to the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan and the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, it feels like NBC has finally mastered the modern Olympic formula to deliver the best experience possible for the American audience. And it is centered on the unique joy and enthusiasm that the Olympics brings.

“It would be hard to discount that the Olympics provides an escape in many ways from everyday life, where the messaging can be very tough,” Rosenfeld reflected. “Maybe it’s naive and maybe it isn’t based on the ratings, that people were looking for a way to come together. Seeing athletes hugging their families, the emotion is back. Paris as a city is a character. The visuals were spectacular, equestrian at Versailles, how do you beat that? Ultimately, the fact that this was held in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, everything came together to reinvigorate that joy. Joy is the word that keeps coming back.”

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