Weak Upfront Hurts NBC’s Olympic Advertising

NBC’s advertising sales for February’s Torino Winter Olympics have stalled - and it’s being blamed on prime time’s upfront, MediaPost reports. NBC has sold 65-70 percent of its inventory so far, according to executives. But media buyers speculated in July that NBC had already sold 75 percent of the inventory. In the past, NBC easily met its advertising sales goals - $900 million for its Summer Olympics in Athens.

During last year’s upfront, NBC rolled back CPM pricing anywhere from two to three percent. NBC, as well as other networks, sold less inventory in this upfront than in previous years - just over 70 percent.

“NBC’s prime time was always looked to bail out selling the Olympics, which always carried a lot of inventory,” said one veteran media agency executive. “This is the first Olympics where they won’t have that.”

NBC’s drop from first to fourth place in adults 18-49 ratings led to an overall drop for the network by a whopping $800 million, to around $1.9 billion in last June’s upfront sales market.

NBC says it will announce some big Olympic deals soon. Some of those are part of bigger United States Olympic Committee sponsorship deals, which allows advertisers to use the marks and logo of the USOC.

IOC sponsors include The Coca-Cola Company, The Eastman Kodak Co., General Electric, John Hancock, McDonald’s Corp., Omega, Panasonic, Samsung, Visa USA, and technology companies Atos Origin and Lenovo.