NBCUniversal has already sold $200 million in advertising for its 2014 broadcast of the Winter Olympics, which will be held in the Russian city of Sochi, reports Brian Steinberg in Advertising Age.
"The London Games created an enormous amount of credibility in the way we’ve programmed the event," said Seth Winter, executive vice president of sales and marketing for NBC Sports Group.
The sales process for Sochi started a few months ago, and Winter expects it to gain momentum given the ratings performance of the Summer Olympics. The first 11 nights of NBC’s Olympics broadcasts have drawn average viewership of 33.1 million, the piece notes.
That would be the most of any non-U.S. Summer Games since the 1976 Montreal Olympics.
"While the notion of selling ad time for an event not slated to take place until 2014 may on the surface sound odd, the fact is most TV networks spend months building support for their marquee broadcasts," Steinberg writes.
"The Olympics sales process never goes dormant," Winter said. "There are different levels of activity and different stages."
He declined to name the advertisers who have already signed up.
Give NBC credit. The online Olympics have been awesome. THe 15 second commercial breaks have rarely intefered with the sports or celebrations. The evening tv shows have provide a nice context for the events where you don’t have to wait three hours for judges, intermissions, and appeals and you can share the joys with your family around the big screen. Yes there have been a few glitches, but for a live event over two weeks they have done a good job.