NBC’s Financial Losses From the Olympics Only Slightly Less Wretched Than Expected

↵Back in January, reports circulated that ↵NBC was going to lose as much as $250 million on broadcasting the Vancouver Olympics. Turns out that wasn’t very far off the mark. The network ended up taking a hit of $223 million, on account of better than expected ratings. So congrats NBC: it only ended up being about 90 percent as bad as expected.↵↵In fact, the Olympics didn’t even generate enough revenue for parent company GE to cover the $820 million it cost to acquire the rights to broadcast the Games. The ratings were 14 percent better than the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, Italy. The problem being that the rights for the Turin games were $613 million, or almost 25 percent less than Vancouver. ↵

↵↵In further spinning of facts, network executives say the Games brought needed exposure to changes in their late night lineup, including Jay Leno’s return to the Tonight Show at 11:35 p.m. While that might be true to some extent, it hardly serves to make up for a loss of nearly a quarter billion dollars, especially when Comcast is still trying to work out a deal in which the cable and Internet provider will acquire a majority of NBCs stock.↵

↵↵Not that this figure will do anything to dissuade the big players in sports from entering into a spending spree next time broadcast rights for the 2014 Olympics come up, just as loss after loss for the host city doesn’t deter countries from creating elaborate promotional campaigns to curry favor with the International Olympic Committee to gain host city rights.↵

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