NBC’s $12 Billion Olympics Bet Stumbles, Thanks to Millennials

[Purveyor]

Back in June, Steve Burke described what he called his Olympics “nightmare.”

“We wake up someday and the ratings are down 20 percent,” the chief executive officer of NBCUniversal said at a conference. “If that happens, my prediction would be that millennials had been in a Facebook bubble or a Snapchat bubble and the Olympics have come, and they didn’t know it.”

He has escaped that with the Rio games this year -- but not by much. Prime-time broadcast viewership has been down about 17 percent compared to the London games four years ago. And in the 18-to-49-year-old age group coveted by advertisers, it’s been even worse. That audience has been 25 percent smaller, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.



The Summer Olympics ratings slip, the first since 2000, raises fresh doubts about what used to be a sure thing: live sports would be a huge and growing draw no matter what. That’s why NBC parent Comcast Corp. paid $12 billion for exclusive U.S. broadcast rights to the Olympics through 2032. Others, including Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN, 21st Century Fox Inc., Time Warner Inc. and CBS Corp., have made long-term bets on football, baseball and basketball.


To be sure, many sporting events are as big as ever. The Super Bowl in February pulled in 112 million viewers, making it the third most-watched event in TV history. On the other hand, Villanova’s victory over North Carolina in the men’s college basketball championship drew 37 percent fewer viewers than last year’s title game, though that may have had something to do with the fact that, for the first time, the match-up was on a cable channel, not a broadcast network.

MORE...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-19/nbc-s-12-billion-olympics-bet-stumbles-thanks-to-millennials

[lpbk2713]

1. I feel badly for all the athletes who worked their asses off to get there.

They deserve much better than what they got.

But this whole thing was managed poorly on many levels.

[MattP]

2. I think Zika and whole Brazil corruption sank the games

Not to mention the sewage, after the run up it just didn't give off a good vibe

[Control-Z]

17. The sewage problem (ew) and then the sofa

that one of the boats ran into triggered such an adverse reaction in me I watched less than I ever have.

[malaise]

20. Read this

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/07/rio-stench-olympic-call-to-ordure
<snip>
ut there is nothing new here: every four years we get our knickers in a twist about the same subject. The Olympics has become sport’s quadrennial call to ordure, and few modern Games have passed without at least flirting with filth.

In the run-up to 2012 the Times reported that waterways around London’s Stratford site (the Olympic stadium stands less than a mile from the Abbey Mills Pumping Station, the celebrated “Cathedral of Sewage” designed by Joseph Bazalgette) “look and smell more like a shanty town’s open sewer than the promised 21st-century eco-park”. Organisers proposed a lengthy tunnel to take foul fluids elsewhere, the only problem with that idea being that it would have taken £2bn and 15 years to construct. Instead a new pumping station was built, and rapidly recycled refuse was repurposed to flush the park’s toilets and water its gardens.

Four years earlier Beijing had renovated nearly 400 miles of sewage pipes to avoid embarrassment. In 2000 a 20km tunnel was built to carry overflows away from the hitherto filthsome Sydney Harbour, and organisers also had to battle a “sewage-like” whiff that drifted over the main stadium during a test event, eventually traced to a nearby mangrove swamp that emitted a “naturally occurring odour” of nauseating intensity.

In Atlanta 20 years ago the local government issued bonds to finance the repair of a creaking, antiquated sewage system and still didn’t do it on time, leading to scare stories about infected tap water. Four years earlier Barcelona built a new sewage plant just in time to clean up its beach, scientists the previous year having found “large amounts of flotsam, including condoms” and “solid faecal matter” in the area to be used for the Olympic sailing.

-----------------------
I'm betting the water was better than that in Flint Michigan

[Buckeye_Democrat]

3. True for me.

And in the 18-to-49-year-old age group coveted by advertisers, it’s been even worse. That audience has been 25 percent smaller, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

I've barely watched any of it this time. I consider it nationalistic fluff.

[madamesilverspurs]

4. Maybe, just maybe

it's the lousy choppy coverage. Just plain horrible this go round.


.

[MattP]

6. Time delays for no reason when it's in our time zone!

[trof]

5. I'll go out on a limb here...

Most people in the U.S. don't give a rat's ass about the Olympics any more.
I don't.
Nobody I know does.

[backscatter712]

7. Between the awful, ad-ridden TV coverage...

...and the army of copyright nazis blocking viewers from using the Internet to find alternatives, no wonder it turned out to be a shitshow.

It's the fucking Olympics. It should be free for all to watch. Fuck the networks and their exclusivity deals.

[jberryhill]

9. Yep

[Initech]

11. Ads ruin everything.

And excessive advertising is even worse.

[msongs]

13. are you volunteering to pay all expense needed to provide "free coverage"?

[maryellen99]

8. I didn't even bother with NBC. I watched CBC and streamed on their app who used non US commentators

Looking forward to the next winter and summer ones which will be in Asia and seeing the big events early in the morning.

[Initech]

10. Because they show the same two fucking sports every time I turn it on!

I swear every time it's basketball or volleyball. 3 channels and that's all they have to cover. You know why the ratings are down? Show other sports!

[Control-Z]

19. Oh, they aired something other than just

women's beach volleyball? Shouldn't we stop pretending and just call it bikini volleyball?

[femmocrat]

12. The coverage was atrocious.

Putting women's gymnastics on at 11 p.m.? The men's gymnastics was barely mentioned even though Danell Leyva took two silvers and Alex Naddour won a bronze.
There was way too much swimming the first week.

I am enjoying the track and field a little more this week.

NBC seemed more interested in showing their hosts having a grand time in Rio than covering the events.

[Auggie]

15. Absolutely. And screw NBC for laying blame elsewhere.

[oberliner]

21. Agreed

Better coverage could have certainly helped.

[CBGLuthier]

14. Bahhh, I am 55 and have never in my life watched more than a few minutes.

Not into sports much and jingoism mixed with sports is even less appetizing.

[brush]

16. They need to do less swimming coverage.

The first week was hour upon hour upon hour of swimmers you can hardly see going bad and forth and bad and forth in the pool.

Too much blanket coverage of that gets boring.

The gymnastics was great and visual and not boring, volley ball was good and thank God track and field finally started where you can see the visually exciting events and appreciate the athletes' skills.

[csziggy]

18. Since NBC started carrying the Olympics I stopped watching

NBC only shows American athletes, they don't show the more commercially profitable sports, often their announcers know nothing about the sports they are covering. Even the sports that Americans medalled in, they only showed the American performances and not their competition.

I used to watch the equestrian events every year. Somewhere I still have BETA tapes of the 1980, 1984 and 1988 Olympic equestrian events.

When NBC took over, most of the events that had previously been shown on broadcast TV were on pay per view satellite channels back when that meant the big dishes. A friend with a large satellite dish paid for the Olympics so she could tape the equestrian events - I think the Olympics were in Korea that year so the times were in the middle of the night here. Since she had to work full time, taping was the only way she could watch the events she wanted to see. Not once during that Olympics were the equestrian events shown at the times on the schedule she was supplied. She eventually got NBC to refund her money by getting her lawyer to threaten to sue.

The last two summer Olympics I have not even checked the schedule to see if any equestrian events were being shown. So little is shown on NBC, it's not worth the time. To see the events I am interested in, I'll wait a few months and find them on DVD or stream them on the internet.

[stopbush]

22. I'm unemployed right now, so I've been watching a lot of the Olympics.

Yes, the primetime coverage on NBC is very USA oriented in what sports are covered and which athletes. Most of it is on tape delay.

That said, the coverage on the affiliate channels has been excellent. Lots of international sports and athletes covered. I really can't complain.