We are a month away from the start of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and NBC is ready to put all of their extra hard work from the pandemic year into action. NBC execs met with the media on Wednesday and confirmed they likely won’t know the exact ad sales revenue from the Olympics until after the games have begun.
The company stated they keep a select few slots unsold leading into the games in case they need to sell more slots to hungry buyers or use them to make good on issues that happen within the month-long event. VP of ad sales for NBC Sports Dan Lovinger confirmed at the press conference that they will exceed the $1.25 billion in ads booked by his team before the pandemic hit.
“After making sure everyone was OK, there was a moment where we said, ‘Wow, do we really have to start all over?’ And then we had to start climbing the mountain again,” Linda Yaccarino, NBCUniversal’s chairman of global advertising and partnerships said at the event. “There was so much uncertainty about if it was going to happen, when it was going to happen, but once it became clear the Games were back on we just started along that track again.”
NBC has 120 advertisers in line to purchase airtime during this year’s Games. That’s a 20% increase from the 2016 event, with new business making up $500 million of their sales so far. The year postponement allowed NBC to beef up the roster but like most things in life, the pandemic added tough wrinkles.
“Businesses were in disarray,” Lovinger said. “As a result, most of them took the option to start all over again … so in the course of the past year, we’ve actually rebuilt our book. This is far and away the biggest media event of the year. There’s nothing like it; this is the biggest reach vehicle in television.”
