Listen: MediaTalk | Season 2 EP 21 - Expectations for the Summer Games: Streaming, Ad Spending, Swimming in the Seine

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Mike Reynolds: Hi, I'm Mike Reynolds, a senior reporter covering the media industry with S&P Global Market Intelligence tech, media and telecom news team. Welcome to "MediaTalk," a podcast hosted by S&P Global, where the news and research staff explore issues in the evolving media landscape. Today, I'm joined by Gary Zenkel, president of NBC Olympics. Gary oversees NBC's Olympic business, working closely with the International Olympic Committee. He also works with the US Olympic Committee and NBC's distribution partners and affiliates to enhance coverage, distribution, and marketing. How are we doing today, Gary?

Gary Zenkel: Doing great, Mike. Good to hear your voice. 

Reynolds: Alrighty. Today, Gary's going to talk about myriad aspects of the Paris Olympics, the opening ceremony for which is July 26 before the Summer Games close on August 11. Let's get to it.

Gary, how many times have you been over to Paris? I know it's tough sledding, but someone has to do it, right?

Zenkel: Yes. I don't have an actual count. I am certain it's over 10. Certainly not looking for any awards for the trips. But it's been a great build-up over the last two and a half years since we left the Beijing 2022 Winter Games.

Reynolds: You're going to be camping there for the duration of the Games. When's that going to happen?

Zenkel: My run there typically at an Olympics is about five weeks, so I will hit the ground on the 8th of July, joining what's now about 300 people over there from NBC.

Reynolds: All right. The Opening Ceremony is going to be on the Seine. The river is also slated to house the marathon swimming and be part of the triathlon. There's been a big sewage system overhaul. Is it clean enough for the athletes, Gary?

Zenkel: I am not a biologist, so I certainly can't make that assessment. The country and the city have been quite focused on ensuring that river is clean enough. It is somewhat dependent on whether they get a ton of rain, but the rainy season, I believe, is over. And so we're quite optimistic that, yes, swimming in the Seine will happen, and we'll see the mayor, maybe even the president, as they've said, be the first in the water.

Reynolds: And you?

Zenkel: No, I'm going to stay out of the water. I don't generally travel with my bathing suit to an Olympics, so I won't be equipped.

Reynolds: Can you talk about the opening ceremony, Gary? It's supposed to be spectacular — boats on the river, all the athletes, hundreds of thousands of fans.

Zenkel: Yeah. It is incredibly exciting, incredibly ambitious. The vision of the organizer and the bid leader to take the ceremony for the first time out of a stadium and really show off the entire city of Paris, as the athletes will ride on boats for a 6-kilometer journey that will give us the benefit of showcasing so many really iconic parts of Paris down the river. We don't know a tremendous amount about the creative plan, what's going to happen while those boats are traveling as we're meeting the athletes, the countries. We expect it to be quite spectacular. The sun will set as the athletes enter a temporary stadium being built in the Trocadéro, which looks right across the river to the Eiffel Tower. And I think it will be a really spectacular, really moving three hours, but also that last hour, 45 minutes as the athletes gather together. And then the cauldron is lit. Nothing like this has been attempted. It is a very complex undertaking both for those organizing it, creating it, and then, of course, for those that are broadcasting it because we're spreading ourselves across the 6 kilometers with a lot to capture. It's really exciting.

Reynolds: It's going to set the bar high for future games. Opening ceremony aside, there are a lot of interesting picturesque venues for the competitions. Can you take us through a couple?

Zenkel: Yeah, Mike, the organizers of this Olympics opted for a couple of reasons to avoid the construction of as many new venues as they could possibly avoid. So they were quite focused on where they didn't have an existing venue, to build a temporary venue; and they then made the decision that when they were going to build a temporary venue, to do it in some of the most iconic locations in Paris, like Versailles for equestrian or at the base of the Eiffel Tower for beach volleyball or at the Place de la Concorde, which is this very beautiful location just on the other side of the Concorde Bridge with lots of Paris in view. They've essentially turned that over to three or four venues, and so what this will provide to the visitor is a really exciting opportunity to both see and experience Paris and watch the Olympics at the same time, and for us, these incredible vistas and backdrops for our coverage.
 

Reynolds: Comcast Corp., NBCU's parent company, installed an Olympic hub, I believe it is, on the Xfinity systems going back to the London Games in 2012. That helps increase viewing. How many other distributors will have their version of this content discovery tool in place for the Paris Games?

Zenkel: Roughly 95% of pay TV homes in the United States will have some version of an Olympic hub on their platform, which means when you turn on your television, if you are in a Verizon Communications Inc. Fios home, or, of course, an Xfinity home, or an Altice USA Inc. Optimum home or a Charter Communications Inc. Spectrum home, you will be greeted with either a big Olympic navigation button or perhaps even an Olympic hub, which would be Olympic thumbnails and opportunities to navigate through the vast offering of Olympic coverage that NBC provides. What we learned in 2012, when Comcast essentially set out to organize multichannel, multistream Olympic coverage, we saw in Comcast X1 homes about 28% more viewing than in non-X1 homes across the country. So it was clear that if you gave people a little bit more direction in terms of how to find content, how to find what they were looking for, that you would engage them for longer periods of time. So one, Comcast and Xfinity have advanced the product, the Olympic hub on Xfinity, on X1 and their Flex box every game since. And others in the industry have followed suit. And in various different distributor homes, they will organize that content differently, but with the same goal in mind, which is to give their subscribers the best possible Olympic experience. Because during those 17 days, most of the people that are turning on those televisions want to find their way to the Olympic Games.

Reynolds: NBCU is also working with TikTok Inc., Snap Inc. and Instagram LLC on short-form Olympic video. Are these licensing deals or ad revenue-sharing pacts, Gary?

Zenkel: They're not really licensing deals. We are actively posting on the social platforms — Instagram or TikTok or X or Snap — on a daily basis across all of our properties as all parts of NBC. We do that, everybody does. We have our handles and our handles have followings, and we have staff that spends their days, and their expertise lies in developing and producing that content specifically for those audiences. When it comes to the Olympics, we do work with platforms. We do forge partnerships to ensure that the Olympic content gets as much engagement on their platform as they can muster. What we do with them in those discussions is make sure that if we're going to post that content there, that it's positioned as best as it can to garner as much engagement as possible. And then, of course, we monetize that content. So in every case, we are selling it, we are controlling the sale. It is entirely in our hands, and it offers us the ability to deliver to our Olympic advertisers audiences across the spectrum — the large network assembled audience and then the short form, in the case of TikTok, a very young demographic, a bit more targetable. And so what was five or six Olympics ago a marketing play is a very important monetization exercise.

Reynolds: Let's go from the small screens to the big ones. People are going to be able to watch the opening ceremony on Imax Corp. outlets and go to 150, 160 AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. theaters for daytime coverage. Why this expansion into this level of distribution?

Zenkel: The Olympics has been one of those few remaining shared experiences where people do gather and watch. We felt that if we offered people an opportunity to gather in theaters to have watch parties, it would just amplify and galvanize interest. Because the Olympics will be, has been, and we will assure that it is really the center of conversation in the United States during those 17 days. Being in movie theaters across the country feels like another way to signal that this is something that you have historically and will no doubt want to continue to watch together. In the case of both Imax and AMC, they're running trailers, promoting the Olympics and promoting NBC's coverage. That began back in March. So we think it's a great marketing tool for us to get in front of audiences in a somewhat untraditional location. But today, reaching audiences all over the place. We're just penetrating all possible screens.

Reynolds: All right, let's get to the main event. NBCU's coverage plan includes a record amount of coverage on NBC and Peacock. How many hours will NBC have overall with the Paris Games, Gary?

Zenkel: It depends on how you come at it, Mike. There will be 7,000 streaming hours available on Peacock, which is NBC's hub for Paris Olympic coverage in the United States. What makes up those 7,000 hours is about 1,500 hours of linear coverage. So you've got all of the linear channels, NBC (US), CNBC (US), USA (US), E! (US), Golf Channel (US), Telemundo (US), UNIVERSO (US), there's a USA 4k channel as well, and you get 1,500+ there. Then you've got all of the host streaming coverage. There are a lot of events, 35 venues, 32 sports, the host essentially delivers to us about 5,000 hours. And so, if you are a fan of tae kwon do, which is not being picked up by one of our channels, it's there. And if you go to Peacock, there's been a tremendous amount of product development time spent between the conclusion of Beijing and today to ensure that search and discovery and finding the content that you are truly after is available to you.

And then there's some bespoke programming. I think Mike, you've heard of the "Gold Zone," something that we have done before but never like this. It'll be like the red zone does for the football fan, letting you lean back and essentially move in and out of the 2025 venues that might be happening simultaneously on any given day or any given time, and we'll take you to the most compelling moments. And that's a whole other chunk of hours that is available.

We do think that there'll be a tremendous amount of viewing again on NBC, NBC daytime, especially in the afternoons in the United States when you've got some of those marquee sports and athletes like gymnastics, swimming, diving, basketball, soccer, etc., live on NBC and USA. And then primetime from 8 to 11. Yes, Paris is dark at that point, but you've got a 10-hour competition day, 12-hour competition day that Molly Solomon and her team will put into a three-hour mini-drama. It will take those 10 hours and then apply the NBC Olympic magic, the great storytelling. You'll really get inside the athletes, you'll learn some backstory, you'll dive into some of the great rivalries that are percolating, and then you'll get those great surprise and delight moments with some of the incredible talent that will join the sports commentators and the sports production.

Reynolds: Gary, you mentioned magic, and we've got some magic of AI going on. There's going to be the capability of getting personally curated highlights from different sports with voice simulation from Al Michaels. What's going on with that?

Zenkel: Peacock and their product team set out to create a personalized highlights engine. Something that would allow an Olympic fan to indicate to Peacock the sports they were most interested in and then every day deliver to that fan a package. And so, what was built was an AI-powered engine that essentially creates these recaps and delivers them to the Peacock account of those who subscribed. And, of course, it needed a voice, it needed a host. And Al was willing. And, of course, we have a treasure trove of Al Michaels calls since he worked for us for so many years. So we took all the Al Michaels calls and — I'm not being a technologist, so I'll use my own language — dumped him into the large learning model. It taught the model Al's voice, and it's uncanny. If you weren't told that it was an AI voice, you wouldn't think it wasn't Al's voice, but it actually is a computer-generated voice. So it's dipping your toe into the AI waters for the Paris Olympics.

Reynolds: Gary, how many folks will you have on the ground in Paris? And what about the number working up at your sports production facility headquarters in Stanford, Conn.? Is it similar to what you deployed from Tokyo, or given the tech, are you able to move the folks around a little bit more?

Zenkel: It's a little different. Stanford has been our home base since London. Before that, we would do some of the production out of 30 Rock. But we've always had the vast majority of our production assets in the host city. And what we learned in Tokyo and then even more so in Beijing, because of the restrictions of COVID, is that the technology that existed in the world that we had been dabbling with was capable of providing the capacity to produce from home. So, a long-winded way of saying, we have really flipped from about two-thirds of our working staff in the host city and one-third at home to more like two-thirds at home and one-third in the host city. For Paris, we will send around 1,100 people, and at home, we will have close to 2,000.

Reynolds: Okay. Dan Lovinger, he's the president of Olympic and Paralympic ad sales — in April, he told all these guys in the press that NBCU had booked about $1.2 billion in ad sales, including $350 million from first-time game backers at your recent Olympic press event. Dan said that the company is still on track toward an Olympic ad sales record. Your thoughts, Gary?

Zenkel: He's the source of that information, obviously. We work quite closely together, so we're tracking to our goals. And those who are on the sidelines are recognizing the buzz. Both because we're getting close and there's more focus, as well as the tremendous success of the US Olympic trials. We've seen record audiences watching those trials. I think if you're sitting on the sidelines and not yet invested, you're probably dialing Dan's number, because that often suggests that the interest around the Olympics is going to soar. And that's what we expect. I'm not the guy that's going to project audiences, but I will be working on my 15th Olympics. Perhaps with the exception of the domestic games of Atlanta and Salt Lake City, I have not felt this type of anticipation that I am feeling for Paris. As you can imagine, my phone rings and my email inbox gets filled up with, "Hey, do you know how I can get some tickets?" So, I won't tell you, Mike, where this is going to end up. I just see signals suggesting that we should see a tremendous amount of interest in consumption. And of course, we will surround the American audience with the opportunity to view these games essentially any way they want. We expect there will be a lot of it on NBC, USA, and other channels, and Peacock. We're going to be in front of you. You're going to turn your television on. And when you walk out on the street, this is what people are going to talk about.

Reynolds: Last one here, Gary. With all that interest and all of the opportunities to see it on different platforms, good trending ad sales? Are you guys making money on the Paris games?

Zenkel: The question is, will we be profitable? Yes.

Reynolds: Yes. All right. I know many of us share these sentiments, Gary, we're looking forward to the Games and the new presentation formats.

Zenkel: Great. Thanks, Mike. Thanks for the opportunity. It's great to talk to you.

Reynolds: All right. That concludes this episode of "MediaTalk." I wanted to thank our guest, Gary Zenkel, for joining us and taking us on a virtual trip to Paris ahead of the Summer Games. This is Mike Reynolds. Enjoy the Olympics. We'll catch up soon on the next edition of "MediaTalk."