Comcast-owned NBCUniversal scored high marks for its coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics that drew audiences and advertisers alike. Now it’s gearing up for the Paralympic Games in Paris, on Thursday announcing Toyota Motor Corp as the returning presenting sponsor.
According to the announcement, Toyota’s brand message of “power of community” will be highlighted during and across pre- and post-show Paralympics Games coverage, including primetime in-show and out of-show-integrations.
Additionally, NBCU disclosed securing a record number of advertisers, which have generated a more than 60% bump in sales compared to the Tokyo Paralympic Games. Just how much that equates to isn’t immediately clear as NBCU didn’t disclose a dollar amount in its announcement to quantify the growth comparison and declined to share additional details when reached via email.
That said, the Paralympic Games, which kick off with the Opening Ceremony on August 28 and competition coverage on August 29, follow successful Paris Olympic Games for NBCU.
This year’s global sporting competition drew a record number of viewers for the Opening Ceremony and viewership continued to surge compared to the 2021Tokyo Summer Olympics, with 30.7 million viewers across NBUC, Peacock and key NBCU platforms. And it achieved success with viewership and features on the Peacock streaming platform. Peacock saw viewership engagement, driving 23.5 billion minutes of Paris Olympics coverage that were streamed, and where ahead of the game it rolled out features like Multiview as well as a Gold Zone to help viewers navigate and engage with the wide-ranging event. Those features both received positive user feedback and will debut for the Paralympic games later this month.
Advertising was also a bright spot for NBCU, with the 2024 Olympic Games marking the first time the media company offered access to inventory through direct sales and programmatically. It’s also enabling programmatic buying for the Paralympic Games. Before the Olympics got underway, NBCU already boasted securing $1.2 billion in ad sales for the event and has since said it delivered the highest Olympic and Paralympic ad revenue in history, including nearly $500 million coming from first-time sponsors as well as digital ad revenue that more than doubled that recorded for the Tokyo Games. And NBCU garnered praise for other tactics like its use of social media influencers during the competition (although some, such as this Wired article pointed to celebrities and Olympic athletes themselves as the real buzz-makers).
In a recent interview with StreamTV Insider, Javier Garcia, SVP and CMO for Comcast’s Central Division that encompasses 16,000 employees and 21 million customers across a 12-state footprint, said the cable operator was really pleased, both in terms of engagement and advertising stemming from the Olympics.
The Olympics and Peacock both fall under the NBCU media unit, but the games provide benefits and opportunity for its cable-operator parent – which also made upgrades to the experience on its Xfinity X1 set-top box platform and emphasizes the underlying broadband connectivity it provides to support streaming needs of live events. The marking chief noted the company made a bet on a richer experience, calling out Peacock in particular as having a lot more content and more opportunities to engage the audience.
“I think ultimately that is paying off,” Garcia said ahead of the Olympic Closing Ceremony earlier this month.
Consumer awareness of the Olympics was there, and Garcia said the best marketing tool from an operator perspective was its own X1 platform. On X1 Comcast prominently merchandised the Olympics experience and was able to showcase to customers different ways to navigate through content and utilize features the platform can offer, he noted.
An area where Comcast invested more time, according to Garcia, was a “choose your own adventure” type experience, enabling viewers to drill down into different sports, search by specific athletes, and look for complete events or recaps. He noted a lot of interest in the highlights for viewers to catch up at the end of the day, as well as an increase in voice remote commands around the Olympics.
And while there was “huge engagement” around highlights and top 10 popular sports like swimming, for example, smaller sports also saw some love.
You could argue “some of the lesser-known sports are not going to necessarily have that level of engagement. But we saw it,” Garcia said. “So I think it’s a great opportunity for us to continue to think about going deeper and deeper” into content. And taking learnings, such as how improving navigation by surfacing different and more niche sports helps generate more engagement.
Now Comcast and NBCU hope to keep the momentum going with Paralympic coverage.
“Coming off of our highly successful Paris Olympic Games, we are thrilled to continue bringing world-class athletic competition to audiences across the country with the 2024 Paralympic Games,” said Dan Lovinger, president of Olympic & Paralympic Partnerships at NBCU, in a statement. “Toyota's dedication to supporting these incredible moments both enhances the viewer experience and strengthens the bond between our audience and these inspiring athletes. Our unprecedented roster of advertisers for Paris 2024 is further validation of the growth and overall health of the Paralympic movement.”
As Garcia put it, Olympics was Chapter 1 for Comcast and NBCU but the Paralympics are Chapter 2, where “all the effort, collaboration and enthusiasm continues” and which Comcast is “equally excited about.”
NBCU’s coverage of the Paralympics will feature more than 140 hours across NBC, USA Network and CNBC. Per NBCU, coverage is “the most streaming hours ever for a Paralympic event,” totaling around 1,500 hours across all 22 sports that will be streamed on Peacock throughout the 12-day event.