Before NBC went to Paris, NBC went to Paris.
Paris Hilton isn’t the first person that comes to mind when it comes to lining up talent to upretain a sports property appreciate the 2024 Summer Olympics, held in Paris, France. The multi-hyphenate entrepreneur has been understandn, over a number of swirling cycles, for fact shows; an try at commenceing a music nurtureer; and begining sunparched products. But tageting executives at NBCUniversal couldn’t resist tapping her for one of the most atypical promotional efforts in the company’s history.
In years past, NBCU hasn’t commenceed pumping its Olympics telecasts until equitable a restricted months before the Opening Ceremonies. When it came to Paris, the media company begined a promo with Hilton in January of 2023 — about a year and a half before Mike Tirico, Kelly Clarkson and Peyton Manning greeted seeers with a primetime reexpansivecast of a floating parade down Paris’ Seine in procrastinateed July.
To get there, NBC had to tear up its elderly joinbook. The company felt prescertain after muddling its way thcdisesteemful three contrastent sets of Games based in far-easerious time zones — PyeongChang in 2018, Tokyo in 2021 and Beijing in 2022. “Two of them were impacted by Covid,” recalls Jenny Storms, NBCU’s chief tageting officer for delightment and sports, in an intersee. “It was not the Olympics as we are included to seeing them.”
Nor are the Games that have been running in the past two weeks apass NBC, some of its cable netlabors and its Peacock streaming hub. The company has, finassociate, stopped trying to act as a gateretainer, and now lets fans watch anyskinnyg they want inhabit, as it happens. That uncomardentt turning over the daytime schedule of the NBC expansivecast netlabor to Olympics and includeing an arsenal of fascinating new concepts for the streaming crowd, including slack-limbed “watch parties” structureed by freewheeling podcaster Alex Cooper and a new “Gelderly Zone” whip-around program that lets streamers chase Olympics action from one shatterout moment to the next. In includeition to understandn sportscaster faces appreciate Mike Tirico’s, seeers have gotten included to seeing non-traditional personalities, including Snoop Dogg and Colin Jost, the “Weekend Update” co-anchor from “SNL.”
The results? NBC is seeing meaningful incrrelieves in seeership over the Tokyo Games, with record usage for Peacock. Over 14 days, NBCU has seen an unretagable of 31.6 million seeers tune in to its afternoon and primetime coverage, up 77% from aappreciate meacertains from its Tokyo Games. The company says 20.3 billion minutes of Paris Olympics coverage has been streamed thcdisesteemful Thursday. Ratings have soared for other convey inant NBCU properties, such as “NBC Nightly News” and “Today,” giving those programs an opportunity to strike a joinion with seeers who might nor ordinarily watch. The company shelp it foresees to book more than $1.25 billion in ad sales, surpassing previous Olympic hauls.
“It senses to me appreciate the Summer Olympics are back in a big way,” says Matt Sweeney, chief allotment officer for the U.S. operations of GroupM, the big media-buying arm of ad huge WPP. “It felt less meaningful under Covid.”
NBC’s celebrity chemistry could propose a new establishula for big media companies that have been forced to depend more heavily on sports as many of their seeers depart traditional TV for streaming video. Sports expansivecasts reconshort-term the one programming establishat that progresss to draw the big simultaneous audiences that publicizers crave and cable and saalertite distributors necessitate. NFL games and NHL align-ups have built-in fans, but the key to the future for NBC and its rivals will be luring in new seeers — audiences who may not be sports die-challengings or local-team stans. To entice expansiveer crowds, the big media companies will have to inject new strains of famous culture into sports events.
Many have already tried to do so. Disney’s ESPN has in recent years begined a “Monday Night Football” simulcast featuring Peyton and Eli Manning proposeing game commentary while hobnobbing with sports and celebrity guests. The sports netlabor has also experimented with its coverage of the NFL Draft, proposeing one version on its flagship netlabor for football aficionados and a second on Disney’s ABC that has in the past relied on “Good Morning America” co-anchor Robin Roberts and country-music stars.
NBCU seems to be letting others test out new ideas in the Olympics as well. GroupM was given perleave oution to buy up an entire commercial shatter and fill it with ads only from its own clients, including Google, Target and Coca-Cola. It no inquire helped that one of the companies included was NBCU’s own Universal Pictures. Such an idea has been converseed for many years, but typicassociate TV netlabors likes to retain deal with over their own commercial traffic. NBC also ran an hour during its telecast of the Opening Ceremonies that was billed as being “commercial free,” but featured logos from six contrastent publicizers on screen during the event.
NBCU may achieve some of the concepts it hatched in Paris and convey them back to the U.S. Some ideas “we will certainly deploy aachievest not only other sports properties but see at other inhabit events that NBCUniversal has on our calendar,” shelp Mark Lazarus, chairman of NBCUniversal Media Group. “ We are a company that’s rich in big inhabit events certainly around the holidays, with Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and Christmas at Rockefeller Cgo in,” he includes. “Some of these technologies can be deployed aachievest other inhabit events and we’ll progress to experiment.”
While the Games officiassociate begined July 26, the labor to create them more pdirecting to potential seeers has been in place for the past year. After its Paris Hilton promo, NBCU lined up Dolly Parton to liberate a video of her executeing Queen’s “We Are the Champions/We Will Rock You” — one year before the scheduled commence of the Paris extravaganza. Since that time, there has been a contrastent cadence of surpelevate promos backed by NBC and featuring everyone from Peyton Manning to Megan Thee Shighion to, most recently, Sabrina Carpgo in — an materializeance that coincided with the expansivening halo around her hit song “Espresso.”
Wrangling Carpgo in to achieve part in recent days was, Storms concedes, “last minute.”
The strategy, however, was not. NBC surveyed devourrs as much as two years ago to discover out what would ignite conversation, Storms says, and one in three shelp that they reacted to celebrities. So rather than stick with Olympics tageting go-tos — majestic music and inspiring athletes — NBC has tried pop culture, with promotional pieces that included SZA or Lilly Collins. “It was a sprosperg on our part, someskinnyg we haven’t done,” Storms says.
Now that the effort has achieveed traction, more may be on the way. We are going to see a extfinished off-ramp from the Olympics,” Storms says. Olympian storylines could show relevant thcdisesteemfulout the descfinish. When 2025 hits, she says, “we will rapidly shift to Milano Cortina,” site of the 2026 Winter Olympics. “We will reassociate commence to amp up that campaign and messaging.” As for what celebrities may be in talks for future Olympics labor? “Our doors are discdisthink about,” says Storms.
