The Cost to Air the Rings: Olympic Television Broadcast Rights

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is taking a new approach to selling the broadcast rights to the Olympic Games. Previously, the IOC sold the television rights on a continental or regional basis, mainly, but the committee has begun taking a new route by selling rights on a country-by-country basis. Within the United States, airing the Olympic Games is the best thing that a network can do to increase their viewership (and has been for years), but with many countries around the world just catching up in technological advances, the IOC has seen an opportunity to gain revenue. The US rights have always accounted for more than 51% of the total broadcasting revenues for the IOC globally, but with this new sales method, the IOC anticipates that for the 2014 and 2016 games, the amount paid by the US broadcasting partner, NBC, will be less than half of the total worldwide.

National Broadcasting Company, more commonly known as NBC, is the official broadcasters of the 2012 London Olympic Games. This television giant first aired the Summer Games in Tokyo, Japan in 1964. Since their premiere, they have been the main US broadcaster of 12 Olympic Games, including every Summer and Winter Games since 2000 in Sydney, and every Summer Games since 1988 in Seoul, South Korea. These rights contracts are sold in groups of two, including one Winter Olympics and one Summer Olympics. The $2 billion spent by NBC for the rights to air the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver and the current 2012 Summer games in London accounted for more than 51% of the total IOC TV revenues. With the release of the cost of the rights to 2018 and 2020, it was announced that the price NBC has increased its bid by 50% since the 2002-2004 quad of years. This table shows the price paid by NBC for the rights to the last three sets, including the current games, and the next two, according to The Associated Press:

Years	Locations	Cost
2002 and 2004	Salt Lake City, USA and Athens, Greece	$1.338 billion
2006 and 2008	Turin, Italy and Beijing, China	$1.507 billion
2010 and 2012	Vancouver, Canada and London, England	$2 billion
2014 and 2016	Sochi, Russia and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil	$2.001 billion
2018 and 2020	Pyeongchang, South Korea and TBD	$2.381 billion

The amount of money spent by NBC has increased by over $1 billion in just 16 years. Although more people do have access to cable and network television since the 2002 Olympic Games, the main reason for this increase and the desire to be the sole broadcaster of the Olympic Games is to have the rights to stream events on the web, whether they are live or replay. Due to high pressure across the USA to have all events available live, NBC set up a new website where they stream all Olympic events live. Powered by partner YouTube, and requiring an account with any cable provider within the US, any viewer can watch any event during the Olympic Games live from London. The ability to air every event, receive money from YouTube for their rights within NBC's contract, and sell advertisement space on this website. Today, it was reported by YAHOO! news, that NBC's Olympic website surpassed 1 billion views since the beginning of the games.

With the incredible increase in online viewers across the US, a macro cosmic relationship may be drawn for future Olympics worldwide. The idea to sell broadcast rights on a country-by-country basis will continue to grow the revenues for the IOC, making the Olympics just one more victim of the economic invasion of the sports world.