Beijing Winter Olympics Offer NBCU an Avalanche of Challenges and ‘Unprecedented Opportunity’
variety.comJennifer Maas TV Business WriterNBCUniversal is about to begin broadcasting the second half of a rare Olympics doubleheader — and fatigue has set in.The Winter Games in Beijing begin Feb.
4, just six months after the close of the Tokyo Summer Olympic Games that were postponed from 2020 because of the pandemic. The Winter Games also overlap with the Super Bowl, which airs on NBC Feb.
13.In an era of waning live viewership for the Olympics, NBCU is facing a huge challenge of attracting eyeballs to an event taking place amid a diplomatic boycott of the host country over human-rights violations.
Mix in Beijing’s very limited group of spectators due to the omicron surge and the fact that the primetime TV audience for the Tokyo games dropped more than 40% compared with the 2016 Rio Olympics, and it’s clear NBCUniversal has quite a slalom to navigate.
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