● From our sister site, TheSportsExaminer.com ●
“[L]et me talk about Media, where the truly outstanding and universally praised production of the Paris Olympics demonstrated the power of NBC broadcast and Peacock. We brought new relevance and excitement to the Olympics by flawlessly presenting the biggest and most complex Olympic Games in history, dominating television, streaming, news and social media for 17 straight days.
“Daily viewership averaged over 30 million across our platforms, an increase of 80% compared to the prior Summer Olympics in 2021, and Peacock streamed 23.5 billion minutes, up 40% from all prior Summer and Winter Olympics combined. All of this leading to a record high $1.9 billion of incremental Olympics revenue in our Media segment this third quarter.
That’s Mike Cavanagh, the President of Comcast Corporation, on the company’s third-quarter earnings conference call on Thursday morning. Comcast’s revenue for Q3 in 2024 were up from $30.1 billion to $32.1 billion, almost all attributable to its Paris 2024 Olympic broadcasts, according to Chief Financial Officer Jason Armstrong:
“Total revenue increased 6.5% to $32.1 billion, benefiting from NBCUniversal’s highly successful airing of the Paris Olympics. Excluding the Olympics, our revenue was relatively flat year-over-year. …
“Now, let’s turn to Media, where revenue increased 37% to $8.2 billion, including the strong results from the Paris Olympics, which generated $1.9 billion in revenue, a record level for any Olympics. Strength in the Olympics was mainly driven by a record $1.4 billion in advertising revenue, with Peacock contributing over $300 million of that. Excluding the Olympics, total advertising revenue was flat year-over-year as the overall market remained stable, while total media revenue increased 5%, driven by an exceptional quarter for Peacock.”
Comcast has major businesses in telecommunications – broadband and wireless – and theme parks, in addition to its broadcasting portfolio. Armstrong noted that Peacock subscriptions grew by three million in the quarter (net), due to the Olympic Games, but also the start of the NFL season.
Asked about the profitability of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic project, Cavanagh added:
“[J]ust on the Olympics, as I said earlier, we couldn’t be more proud of what our teams accomplished across the whole company on the Olympics. So, we were cautiously optimistic going into the Games that they would perform well given all the effort we put in in Paris to their backdrop, but viewership, ad sales exceeded our expectations and the Games were profitable.
“I won’t go into the level of profitability, but profitable Games for us. And so, we walk away from it very excited as we look forward to future Olympics from here, because it was a spell leading up to Paris where prior Olympics, for a variety of reasons, had not performed as well as we had hoped. So, I think there’s an incredible amount of energy and excitement as we look ahead to L.A. and beyond and Milan in between.”
Cavanagh confirmed that Comcast made money on Paris 2024, but not that much. Although the actual rights fee paid to the IOC has not been disclosed, it’s believed to be in the range of $1.675 billion, and there are significant production costs on top of that. Profitable yes, but not by so much.
But after the grave concerns over the very low ratings and engagement for Tokyo, the Paris results were far better and pave the way for a major expansion for Los Angeles in 2028.
That’s good news for NBC, for the International Olympic Committee and for the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee, which receives substantial revenue from NBC’s rights fee as a pass-through from the IOC.
Comcast holds rights to the Olympic and Winter Games through Brisbane 2032.
~ Rich Perelman
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