• by Wayne Friedman , October 18, 2023

With less than a year to go, NBCUniversal says the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games are still pacing ahead of the previous summer Olympic event in 2021 in terms of advertising sales.

In April of this year, Dan Lovinger, president of Olympics/LA 2028 Ad and Sponsorship Sales for NBCUniversal, said the Paris games ad-sales effort was ahead of the Tokyo Summer Olympics -- which aired in July/August 2021. 

The Tokyo Summer Olympics took in $1.76 billion in advertising revenue for NBCUniversal. The Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022 earned $1.25 billion for the media company.

NBC didn’t reveal specifics concerning brands/advertising or pricing for the sponsorships or media deals. 

The national TV advertising market has been weak since the fourth quarter of 2022 with pricing flat or slight down versus previous periods.

For the Paris games, the company said it had sold out of all live ‘Opening Ceremony’ advertising positions and halftime sponsorship positions for team competitions -- including soccer and basketball -- across a number of media platforms.  

NBCU also noted new “Olympic Prime” pod sponsorships are sold out -- media placement which it says will reduce commercial interruption while integrating select partners during key moments of NBC’s Primetime coverage. The Olympic Prime pods will run across both linear NBC TV networks and Peacock streaming coverage.

NBCU says significant growth across digital audiences -- versus previous games -- is anticipated. The Tokyo games amassed six billion streaming minutes across digital and social media -- the most-streamed Olympics ever.

With regard to live, linear TV viewership,  NBC Olympics’ Tokyo prime time averaged 15.6 million viewers, per Nielsen. Going back five years (2016) only seven TV series, mostly “Sunday Night Football”, bested the Tokyo Olympics.

Every Paris Olympic and Paralympic event will be streamed live and on demand on Peacock, which NBC says is a first for the Summer Olympic Games. Also the Paris Summer Olympics will have more programming hours on the NBC broadcast network than any previous Games as well as its Peacock streaming service.

The Paris Summer Olympics will run July 26-Aug. 11, 2024; The Paralympics Paris 2024 are slated for August 28 – September 8, 2024.