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Broadcasting station NBC agreed to a $3 billion deal to extend compensation for the U.S. Olympic Games for more than 2032, days before the body, which runs the world’s largest sporting event, elected a new president.
The agreement, released Thursday, includes rights to broadcast the 2034 Salt Lake City Winter Games and the 2036 Summer Olympics, but this does not have a Host City yet.
NBC, owned by US media giant Comcast, has held the exclusive rights to display the Summer Olympics in the United States since 1988 and is the most important commercial partner of the International Olympic Committee. The broadcaster last signed an extension in 2014, worth nearly $8 billion.
The New Deal goes beyond media rights and includes several new “strategic initiatives” including “collaboration on digital advertising opportunities” and additional support from Comcast to create and distribute media coverage for the game.
The IOC’s move to close the biggest contract for the next decade comes just days before the members meet in Greece and choose their successor to former German Olympic fencing champion Thomas Bach, who has been in charge of the body for 12 years.
The IOC earns about 60% of its revenue from television trading and an additional 30% from sponsorships. The latest Olympic cycle, which ended in Paris, brought in $7.6 billion, attracting a surge in audiences.
NBC’s long-term commitment to the Olympics is in the US media market in a fluid state as streaming companies such as NTFLIX, Apple and Amazon compete with traditional cable groups to sought the right to show premium sports to attract subscribers and advertisers.
Despite the pressure on broadcasters from shift to streaming, the value of live sports rights is largely supported in the US market. Last year, the National Basketball Association sealed off a new 11-year contract worth $760 billion.
However, NBC’s attempts rival Disney, Fox and Warner Bros., bundle live sports such as the NFL, NBA and FIFA World Cup with a sports-centric streaming service called Venu at the beginning of the year. The venture is designed to target younger audiences who don’t subscribe to cable television.
Last year’s NBC reporting of Parisiolmín Games has averaged 67 million viewers per day across all platforms and analysts, and is hoping for a large audience of the game in Los Angeles in 2028.
All events in Paris were streamed in real time via NBC’s Peacock platform. This ran alongside the highlight show, attracting a record $12,000 in ad revenues of $1.2 billion.
