NBCUniversal Is Counting on Olympics to Help Struggling Peacock — Here’s How the Company Is Going for the Gold

Since NBC first acquired the rights in 1988, the Summer Olympics has been a star athlete in the network’s roster. This year, parent company NBCUniversal hopes the Paris games, which kick off on July 26, will boost its struggling streaming service, Peacock, with wall-to-wall coverage and exclusive content it lacked during previous games.

NBC will make all of its 2024 Olympics coverage available on Peacock, including some bonus and specialty shows, marking a fresh start for the network after executives acknowledged its two previous Olympics broadcasts were “significantly challenged” and “impaired” by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We had Peacock in play and it was part of our coverage in Tokyo, and then again in Beijing, but in Tokyo, frankly, we didn’t do a very good job for our customers,” Mark Lazarus,  NBCUniversal’s Media Group Chairman who oversees streaming, told reporters last month. “We didn’t exactly deliver what we said we were going to deliver and we have learned a lot from that.”

“Like so many sports during the COVID era, it lacked buzz, vibe and fans in the stands,” NBC Sports chairman Rick Cordella added. “Paris changes all that in a big way.”

With over 5,000 hours available on Peacock alone, NBC will air 7,000 hours of Olympics coverage — including all 329 medal ceremonies. Notably, more than half the network’s primetime coverage will be dedicated to women’s sports.

But the pressure is on in more ways than one. The Paris Olympics arrives when live sports have become one of the most coveted TV commodities, as seen by the recent negotiations for NBA’s latest round of media rights packages reportedly worth $76 billion. NBC is expected to secure 100 NBA games each regular season in a deal valued at $2.5 billion per year for the next 11 years. starting in the 2025-2026 season.

Peacock needs to prove itself as cord cutting has eroded linear viewership and ad dollars are migrating with audiences to streaming and social video platforms like TikTok and YouTube. In June, Peacock accounted for just 1.2% of all TV viewing, according to Nielsen, surpassing only Paramount+ (1.1%) and Pluto (0.8%).

The streamer, which lags behind most of its major competitors like the industry-leading Netflix and Prime Video, lost 500,000 paid subscribers in the second quarter of 2024 and has a total of 33 million now, parent company Comcast reported Tuesday. At the same time, the media giant lost 419,000 pay TV customers during the quarter for a total of 14.99 million.

NBC executives have not laid out a timeline for when Peacock will reach profitability, though it narrowed its loss to $348 million and grew revenue to $1 billion, compared to a loss of $651 million and revenue of $820 million in the year-ago period.

Ahead of the Olympics, Peacock raised the price of its Premium and Premium Plus tiers by $2 to $7.99 and $13.99 per month, respectively. The hike went into effect on July 18 for new customers and will impact existing customers starting Aug. 17.

“I’m very confident that what we’re doing around Peacock and the media business operating together is going to put us on a path to optimize that business,” Comcast President and NBCU CEO Mike Cavanagh told analysts on Tuesday. “This is a year where we see the growth in Peacock offsetting the decline in some of our linear businesses.”

Analysts with MoffettNathanson said Comcast seems “infinitely better prepared for Paris.”

The company’s work at promoting personalities and experience selling ads for an Olympics where Peacock will play a major role “will undoubtedly drive a huge spike in Peacock signups,” the firm stated in a research note on Tuesday. “They won’t keep all of those subscribers after the Olympics are over, but they’ll surely keep a lot of them.”

While pointing out that Peacock is “still clearly sub-scale,” MoffettNathanson noted that Comcast “has the balance sheet to wait for the market to come to them” as the media industry is expected to consolidate in the coming years.

Here’s how network executives see Peacock as a “big differentiator” in its Olympics coverage.

A star-studded affair

While the Olympics’ main stars are its athletes, NBCUniversal is leaning on its own roster of talent to keep viewers engaged outside of the competition.

NBC and Peacock are leveraging a mix of more established celebrities like Snoop Dogg, Leslie Jones, Kelly Clarkson, Kevin Hart, Kenan Thompson and Colin Jost, and celebrities like podcaster Alex Cooper who will appeal to younger audiences. The “Call Her Daddy” host is at the center of one of Peacock’s many Olympics-based spinoff shows, “Watch Live with Alex Cooper.”

“We’re looking for big, popular people who know who we’re reaching: People that we’re not reaching through our platforms,” Lazarus told TheWrap. “We’re all trying to find the next generation of viewers and fans.”

After two events dominated by the pandemic, it was important to bring back “joy and fun” when finding the right talent for the job, NBC Olympics Production president and executive producer Molly Solomon told TheWrap.

“We tapped into specific people that have deep-rooted interests with a certain demographic that we wanted to watch the Olympics,” Solomon said. That included “cross-cultural figures” like former NFL quarterback Peyton Manning and singer-turned talk show host Kelly Clarkson, she said.

Network executives worked to identify personalities who would still be organic to sports, pairing Olympics superfan Leslie Jones with American swimmer Katie Ledecky, for example. Jones and Ledecky first met in an airport in 2016 and have since developed a friendship.

NBCUniversal is also investing in the Gen Z audience by giving special access to certain creators. The company partnered with social media companies, including Meta, Overtime, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube to determine which of their influencers would be the best fit. The initiative involves giving 26 creators — such as food influencer Richard Chao, who has 2.3 million followers on TikTok, and lifestyle personality Haley Kalil, who has 6.42 million YouTube followers — on-the-ground and behind-the-scenes access they can then share with their followers.

“By no means are we going to overload the presentation with celebrities and things like that,” Solomon added. “But to weave some of these elements in a taped show is going to be really interesting.”

An advertising and ratings boon

NBCUniversal also hopes that Peacock will help it deliver more advertising revenue and stronger ratings from the Olympics than previous years.

National TV advertising spend for the Tokyo Summer Olympics through cable and network broadcasts exceeded $1.7 billion in 2021, a 16% decrease from about $2 billion in 2016, according to MediaRadar’s Vivvix, a firm which tracks ad spending. NBC accounted for over $1.4 billion of that total, down 23% from the $1.8 billion spent to advertise during the 2016 games, while Peacock accounted for less than $665,000.

For the Beijing Winter Olympics — NBCU also has also held the Winter Olympics rights since 2002 — national TV advertising spend reached nearly $391 million through cable and network broadcasts in 2022, down 53% year over year from the $838 million spent in 2018, while NBC fell 58% from nearly $722 million in 2018 to over $304 million in 2022. (Vivvix found “no significant spending” for Peacock during the 2022 games.)

NBC executives have emphasized that the 2024 events are on track to deliver an-all time record, with advertisers’ spend already surpassing $1.2 billion in commitments as of April, including $350 million from new advertisers.

The network has already sold out of all inventory for both the opening and closing ceremonies across linear and digital, as well as all planned halftime sponsorship for team competitions across numerous platforms and Olympic Prime pod sponsorships. And NBCU has sold 95% of its custom, primetime marketing integrations.

A NBC spokesperson declined to disclose how much ad spend has been specifically allocated to Peacock thus far.

NBCUniversal, which paid $7.75 billion in 2014 to extend the media rights to the Olympics through 2032, has seen average viewership for the opening ceremony drop from 31.9 million during the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics to 15.9 million at Beijing in 2022. But executives have reason to believe there is still interest in the event.

In 2024, the Olympic Trials alone attracted over 50 million viewers, Dan Lovinger, NBC’s president of Olympic and Paralympic sales, told TheWrap. That figure didn’t account for Simone Biles, who helped generate an average viewership of 7.6 million across NBC and Peacock during her June 30 comeback.

Combined viewership in June of trials for swimming, diving, track and field and gymnastics across NBC, Peacock and USA Network saw a 58% uptick from 2021. On NBC and Peacock alone, the primetime coverage saw an average viewership of 3.9 million, a 24% increase from the 3.2 million viewers for the 2021 trials.

For the first time, the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games opened programmatic buying, allowing advertisers of all sizes to connect with audiences. “We’re seeing a decided shift towards streaming audiences, which allows us to sell to many more advertisers,” Lovinger explained.

Though a number of advertisers have continued to opt for the full multi-platform experience that has historically been driven by linear, Lovinger said there’s also been some interest in opting to solely buy ad space for individual platforms.

“We’ve added multiple distribution points through social partners and worked with those social partners to sell into them through ad adjacencies and branded content,” Lovinger added. “There is no one single way to buy the Olympics anymore. Every advertiser has their own version of it.”

A test run for big events to come

Because of the time difference with Paris, most of the big events will be happening during the day in the United States. NBC will air an enhanced Olympics primetime show at 7:30 p.m. ET every night that will showcase the big storylines and events of that day, complete with behind-the-scenes footage and exclusive interviews.

Peacock will also air “Gold Zone,” a live program that will show the biggest clips of the day from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET. The platform will also be customized with nearly 40 hubs based on specific Olympic interests as well as up-to-date medal standings for each country, an option to watch multiple events at once and an interactive schedule. If a viewer is dying to watch a surfing event, they can use Peacock to set a reminder to watch it.

But Peacock’s biggest innovation has to do with legendary sports commentator Al Michaels. Using generative AI, Peacock is giving subscribers the option to have a daily personalized recap narrated by Michaels (who is 79 and very much alive), highlighting their favorite events and countries.

In addition to bringing more viewers and subscribers to Peacock, NBCUniversal hopes the Olympics will help drive cross-platform engagement and promote newly released and upcoming series like the gladiator drama “Those About to Die,” Kevin Hart’s heist series “Fight Night,” the Steph Curry comedy “Mr. Throwback” and British drama “Day of the Jackal.”

Peacock’s Olympics revamp is also part of the network’s plans for future sporting and live events. On Sept. 6, Peacock will exclusively air an NFL game from Brazil, which will integrate many of the features available during the Olympics, including multiview and Catch Up with Key Plays.

The 50th anniversary of “Saturday Night Live” next year will also get a similar tech push from Peacock. Direct to Consumer President Kelly Campbell told TheWrap that the Peacock team has been working with longtime “SNL” head Lorne Michaels on “how to do the ‘SNL’ 50 in style.”

While a lot is riding on how well the Olympics performs on the platform — and how many of those new subscribers are retained — NBCUniversal seems dedicated to investing in Peacock despite the streamer’s challenges. In 2022, Comcast said it would spend around $3 billion on the service’s content that year, with plans to increase that number to $5 billion “over the next couple of years.”

“We think Peacock is the most complete service,” Lazarus said. The hope is that those tuning into the streamer for the Olympics will agree.

Paris 2024 Olympics live coverage begins July 26 with the opening ceremony at 12 p.m. ET.

The post NBCUniversal Is Counting on Olympics to Help Struggling Peacock — Here’s How the Company Is Going for the Gold appeared first on TheWrap .