This from a story that I’ll be linking to in today’s links. This is from the Sports Business Journal and a story written by Tripp Mickle on how Comcast managed to keep the Olympics in NBC’s fold and away from aggressive bids from Fox and ESPN. It’s good reading. Bob Fernandez of the Philadelphia Inquirer also wrote about Comcast’s presentation to the International Olympic Committee and that story is in today’s links as well.
I wanted to provide you a chart that is in today’s SBJ story and it shows you how the rights for the Olympics have escalated since the Games were first televised on CBS in 1960. Up until 1992, the Winter and Summer Olympics were held in the same year, a pattern that was broken in 1994.
Take a look at the chart.
The Olympics on TV
| YEAR | LOCATION | NETWORK | AVG. PRIME-TIME RATING | U.S. RIGHTS FEE |
| 1960 | Rome | CBS | NA | $390,000 |
| 1960 | Squaw Valley, Calif. | CBS | NA | $50,000 |
| 1964 | Tokyo | NBC | NA | $1.5 million |
| 1964 | Innsbruck, Austria | ABC | NA | $600,000 |
| 1968 | Mexico City | ABC | 14.3 | $4.5 million |
| 1968 | Grenoble, France | ABC | 13.4 | $2.5 million |
| 1972 | Munich, Germany | ABC | 25 | $7.5 million |
| 1972 | Sapporo, Japan | NBC | 17.2 | $6.4 million |
| 1976 | Montreal | ABC | 24.8 | $25 million |
| 1976 | Innsbruck, Austria | ABC | 21.7 | $10 million |
| 1980 | Moscow | NBC | NA | $87 million* |
| 1980 | Lake Placid, N.Y. | ABC | 23.6 | $15.5 million |
| 1984 | Los Angeles | ABC | 23 | $225 million |
| 1984 | Sarajevo, Yugoslavia | ABC | 18.2 | $91.5 million |
| 1988 | Seoul, South Korea | NBC | 17.9 | $300 million |
| 1988 | Calgary | ABC | 19.3 | $309 million |
| 1992 | Barcelona, Spain | NBC | 17.5 | $401 million |
| 1992 | Albertville, France | CBS | 18.7 | $243 million |
| 1994 | Lillehammer, Norway | CBS | 27.8 | $300 million |
| 1996 | Atlanta | NBC | 21.6 | $456 million |
| 1998 | Nagano, Japan | CBS | 16.3 | $375 million |
| 2000 | Sydney, Australia | NBC | 13.8 | $715 million |
| 2002 | Salt Lake City | NBC | 19.2 | $555 million |
| 2004 | Athens, Greece | NBC | 15 | $793 million |
| 2006 | Turin, Italy | NBC | 12.2 | $613 million |
| 2008 | Beijing | NBC | 16.2 | $894 million |
| 2010 | Vancouver | NBC | 13.8 | $820 million |
| 2012 | London | NBC | NA | $1.18 billion |
| 2014 | Sochi, Russia | NBC | NA | $775 million |
| 2016 | Rio de Janeiro, Brazil | NBC | NA | $1.226 billion |
| 2018 | To be determined | NBC | NA | $950 million |
| 2020 | To be determined | NBC | NA | $1.43 billion |
NA: Not available; no television ratings system was in place before the 1968 Games.
* The United States boycotted the 1980 Summer Games. NBC’s coverage was limited to highlights and two anthology-style specials after the Games were completed, though the network still paid the full rights fee.
Sources: SportsBusiness Journal research, U.S. Olympic Committee, The Nielsen Cos.
Links will be coming up shortly.
