The NBC 2024 Olympics playbook has paid off so far

of Comcast NBCUniversal has a long-standing bet on the Olympics, but this summer the company put all its resources into the Games in an effort to gain more viewership — especially for its growing streaming platform, Peacock.

It seems to have paid off so far – more than 30 million people concerted on NBC’s television and streaming platforms to watch the games and generated a record $1.2 billion in ad revenue.

NBC executives, having touted the Olympics as a driver of growth and diversification in the increasingly crowded landscape of streaming and live sports, are now looking to extend the benefit beyond the Games and into future live sports.

“We completely changed the game plan internally. We destroyed the playbook two years ago,” said Jenny Storms, director of entertainment and sports marketing at NBCUniversal. “It was very scary at the time to take the institutional knowledge we’ve had for so long and uproot it and start over. We really started new and fresh across the board, from production to the company counterparts.”

The Olympics have long been key for NBCUniversal. Paris marked the 18th Olympic Games broadcast by NBC in the U.S. The company renewed the rights in 2014, agreeing to pay $7.65 billion for the Games between 2022 and 2032, amounting to more than $1.2 billion for each.

Just before Paris, the efforts had failed. The 2021 Tokyo Olympics and the 2022 Beijing Olympics drew their lowest ever attendances for the Summer and Winter Games, respectively.

Storms noted that there were factors at play in these last two Olympics that were largely out of NBCUniversal’s control.

Both Games were covered from the early stage of the pandemic. Tokyo was postponed by a year and fans and families were not present at either match. The time zone difference from Asia worked for the US broadcast as well.

But mostly the strategy for Peacock during these Games appeared to be the biggest mistake. In Tokyo, very few events were available for live streaming on Peacock. In Beijing, the live content was there, but fans struggled to find what they wanted to watch.

“We argued that the Peacock would be the home of the Olympics and we didn’t exactly deliver,” said Mark Lazarus, president of NBCUniversal Media Group. “We were nervous about how much content to put in there, how to schedule it and how to deliver it [with traditional TV]. And rightfully so, we were told by the fans that we didn’t deliver what we said we would.”

Company executives credit Paris as part of the success of this year’s Olympics, between the spectacular setting — with the opening ceremony on the Seine River and beach volleyball played in front of the Eiffel Tower, to name a couple — and favorable time zone. which works in favor of NBC.

The company also began marketing the Olympics much earlier this time around, using various parts of NBCUniversal to get the word out, from news programs and talk shows to various forms of advertising, Storms said.

Both Storms and Lazarus also noted the success of broadcasting the Olympic trials in the weeks leading up to the games.

“We’ve never really pushed hard with testing before,” Storms said. “But it was the most streamed Test of all time and it was important to get America warmed up.”

And then there was the star factor of NBCUniversal’s in-house roster.

The company used its own talent more strategically in 2024, executives said. In addition to running promos for content, NBC’s A-listers embedded themselves in the events themselves, co-hosting and reporting from the sidelines. Fan favorite Snoop Dogg, NBC’s special Olympics correspondent, generated buzz on social media and attracted more eyes at live events. And, his special appearance in Paris helped promote his upcoming role with NBC’s “The Voice” this fall.

Other NBC talent attended the Games to promote their projects. Mariska Hargitay, who has played the character Olivia Benson on “Law & Order: SVU” since 1999, was in Paris to promote the show is on the 26th time. Various members of the “Saturday Night Live” cast were in attendance, including Colin Jost, who covered surfing in Tahiti and had to do a early exit due to health problems.

Broadcasts from both NBC and Peacock also promoted the Games, and Universal’s upcoming film “Wicked” was frequently highlighted, with stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo appearing on the opening ceremony red carpet.

The “Wicked” cast also voiced a commercial for American gymnast Simone Biles, and an exclusive clip from the film aired during the “Today” show from Paris. NBC said among moviegoers, “‘Wicked’ gained ground across all measures during the Olympics, doubling our top awareness level and increasing overall awareness,” according to a poll.

A is appreciated 2.8 million consumers signed up to Peacock during the first week of the Summer Games, averaging nearly 400,000 daily additions, according to data provider Antenna. That nearly matched the enrollment leading up to the Peacock’s exclusive NFL Wild Card game in January, according to Antenna. The game is considered the most-streamed live event in history with 27.6 million viewers, according to Nielsen.

While Comcast recently reported that Peacock had 33 million paying customers as of June 30 — 500,000 fewer than the prior period, and widely attributed to losing customers after the Wild Card game — analyst Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson said customers are worth noting remaining from the Wild Card game.

“I suspect they will have the same experience as the Olympics,” Moffett said. “Sure, some of those customers will leave, but they’ll probably end up keeping a lot more than not.”

However, traditional television made up the majority of viewing during the Paris Games – nearly 90% of viewers watched on broadcast and cable channels, Lazarus said. With the help of the more favorable time zone, NBC broadcast live events on TV and the Peacock during the day and renamed the evening broadcast “Primetime in Paris”, repeating major events with programs and interviews.

The strategy used in Paris will serve as the road map for future Olympic Games – the 2026 Milan Winter Olympics and the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Games – as well as other sports broadcast live on NBC’s television networks and Peacock, executives said.

Shortly after the 2024 Olympics come the new seasons of English Premier League football, American college football and the National Football League. NBC will also be the rights holder for NBA games beginning in the 2025-2026 season.

“I think Peacock is becoming much more sophisticated, as we saw with the Olympics, in how they can do sports coverage,” said Shirin Malkani, co-president of the sports industry group at Perkins Coie.

Disclosure: CNBC parent NBCUniversal owns NBC Sports and NBC Olympics. NBC Olympics is the US broadcast rights holder for all Summer and Winter Games through 2032.