How to Make $1.2 Billion in TV Ad Revenue in 19 Days

After Dan Lovinger successfully executed the ad sales version of the triple axel in 2018—the NBC Sports Group ad sales chief oversaw more than $1.2 billion in sales for Super Bowl 52 and the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, held just four days apart—he took a weeklong break. But he soon found himself contemplating his next gargantuan challenge. In an 18-month span between 2020 and 2022, his team would be tasked with selling inventory for two Olympics and another Super Bowl. “I’m a pretty even-keeled guy,” Lovinger recalls, “but my heart literally started racing when I started thinking about it.” In hindsight, that would have been a walk in the park compared to the truncated scenario the company faced instead. CBS and NBC ultimately swapped Super Bowl telecast years, and then Covid-19 prompted a yearlong postponement of the Tokyo Olympics—meaning that instead of doing all of that within 18 months, NBCUniversal is actually pulling it off in just six. And now, a mere half year after selling the Olympic Games in Tokyo, the company is doing it all over again in Beijing—plus, smack in the middle of the 19-day event (Feb. 2-20) is a little telecast called Super Bowl 56, which is airing during the Games for the first time ever. "Absolutely nothing compares to the Olympics or the Super Bowl, and airing both in the same month is nothing short of historic," says Linda Yaccarino, chairman, global advertising and partnerships, NBCUniversal. "Now, our partners have an opportunity to connect with real people at a scale that does not exist anywhere else: live, on social and in streaming." Between the two colossal events, NBC Sports expects to bring in ad revenue on par with the $1.22 billion it generated in February 2018. (Last summer’s Tokyo Games accounted for $1.24 billion in ad revenue.) On Feb. 13—or, as NBC Sports is calling it, “Super Gold Sunday”—the company will air both Super Bowl 56 and Beijing coverage, and expects to generate more than $500 million in ad revenue, which Lovinger says will be “the largest day in NBCU’s history.” Fueling that record haul, the company sold 30-second Super Bowl spots for as much as $7 million, at an average unit rate 20% higher than it secured in 2018. And it’s little wonder why. As linear ratings continue to plummet, the Super Bowl “is the greatest media marketing opportunity there is, by far,” says Jeremy Carey, managing director, Optimum Sports at Omnicom. Not only because of the massive audience—last year’s game drew 96.4 million viewers—but the fact that it’s the only event each year where many consumers tune in specifically to watch the commercials. The Olympics, meanwhile, are “absolutely huge,” and the two events together offer “huge, diverse scale,” says Carey. “Both of these properties are family viewing. We struggle to keep families together and in front of whatever screen or device they’re viewing on. It’s a net positive for us to be able to market in this environment.” That’s one reason why, in 2019, NBCU engineered what it is calling the “once in a lifetime” confluence of events, convincing CBS to swap years in the Super Bowl rotation. That enabled its broadcast revival to move up a year to 2021 while NBC waited an extra year for the opportunity to televise both events simultaneously. “We would always rather control our own destiny and sell a Super Bowl that sits in the middle of our Olympics than have CBS sitting right in the middle of our Olympics,” says Lovinger. Or, as Yaccarino puts it, "Our thinking was simple: Go big, or go home." Early outreach Replicating its approach to selling both events in 2018, NBC Sports reached out to key partners early last year, prior to the upfront. Lovinger came armed with an updated version of the Super-Sized Ad Model, which NBCU had created in 2018 to “help CMOs test creative so that they can be more successful in the Big Game,” he says. It originally looked at five key objectives for potential Super Bowl advertisers: creative appeal, creative engagement, social buzz, Google search and cut through. This year’s model added a sixth KPI—ad likeability—and more than doubled the number of past Super Bowl ads in the study: 538 spots, spanning eight Super Bowls. (There was also an Olympic version of it, called the Olympic Ad Engine.) “It gets you into the discussions earlier than you typically might, and it allows you to create some demand against these big events earlier than you typically might,” says Lovinger. The $500 million mashup NBCU expects to rake in more than half a billion dollars in ad revenue—the company’s largest single-day haul ever—on Feb. 13, which it is calling Super Gold Sunday. It will broadcast Super Bowl 56 on NBC, Telemundo and Peacock, and received as much as $7 million per 30-second spot. Then, instead of airing a splashy entertainment program after the game, as is tradition, NBC will feature Winter Olympics coverage. (Gold medals are expected to be awarded in ice dance figure skating and the new women’s monobob event, featuring a one-person bobsled.) The company carried that momentum into what turned out to be its largest-ever sports upfront marketplace last spring and summer, packaging the events together (or with other prized inventory, like Sunday Night Football) to offer pricing and real estate opportunities that wouldn’t exist for marketers later on. Given that the upfront marketplace was moving even before the Tokyo Games last July, Lovinger also included inventory from that Olympics in some deals. “My thinking was, I’ve got these three major events. If it’s going to be too much for an advertiser, I want to help them figure out how to manage what they can do, rather than worry them about what they can’t do,” says Lovinger. As a result, “we came out of the upfront feeling really good about all three.” But especially the Super Bowl. NBCUniversal emerged from the upfront with 85% of its in-game inventory already sold. And while the company had only “a few” units left as of September, it intentionally held onto them until the Super Bowl matchup—Cincinnati Bengals vs. Los Angeles Rams—was set following the championship games on Jan. 30. “These matchups sometimes deliver resonance for certain creative based on who’s in the game,” says Lovinger. The gamble paid off: NBCU announced it was sold out of Super Bowl inventory on Feb. 3, 10 days before the game. After topping out at $6.5 million per unit last year, the company fetched $7 million for several of its remaining spots, 27% more than ViacomCBS' top Super Bowl price ($5.5 million) in 2021. Brands, meanwhile, scrambled to determine the best strategy for both programs. For the largest marketers, “you look at both of them to try and figure out a strategic plan that has the potential to incorporate and utilize one, potentially as a lead-in or lead-out, carry momentum coming out of a campaign for Super Bowl,” says Carey. That said, while several advertisers will appear in both the Olympics and Super Bowl, only a “handful” are major players in both, says Lovinger. Political hot potato In addition to managing some of the same pandemic pitfalls they encountered in Tokyo, advertisers found themselves navigating a political hot potato with the Beijing Games. The U.S. called for a diplomatic boycott of the Olympics, with the White House protesting what it called “[China's] egregious human rights abuses and atrocities in Xinjiang.” That has put several traditional Olympics sponsors under the spotlight. Many are downplaying their usual splashy Games marketing; Coca-Cola, for example, is running a campaign in China only. Measuring the future During the Super Bowl and Winter Olympics, NBCU will take a major step forward in its yearlong effort to create a new currency for cross-platform measurement on its One Platform ad offering. (It is one of many media companies actively developing alternative measurement metrics following Nielsen’s public stumbles during the pandemic.) It will engage in a test-and-learn during both sporting events with iSpot.tv, its first certified measurement partner. The Olympics test-and-learn will focus solely on campaign-level data, helping marketers more precisely understand the audience being delivered. NBCU says it will provide unified, de-duplicated linear and digital measurement to the nine advertisers (from the six major holding companies) participating in the test-and-learn within 48 hours. This follows an internal test-and-learn during last summer’s Tokyo Games, which involved 16 advertiser campaigns and six measurement companies. Nielsen won’t fully deploy its new cross-platform metric, Nielsen One, for two more years, but “we don’t need to wait until 2024 to count it all, see it all and value it all, which is critically important because our advertisers need to be able to understand the totality of the delivery that we provide that is not just about linear television,” says Kelly Abcarian, evp, measurement and impact, NBCUniversal advertising and partnerships. “The next step is to be prepared to work with our client to transacting on alternative currencies in the upfront.” “The advertisers that understand the true Olympic ideal are standing by the Games,” says Lovinger, who reminded clients that U.S. athletes do not receive government funding and instead “rely on the generosity of corporate America through sponsorship and advertising.” As for the brands that sat the Games out this time, “I think when they see the Olympic spirit and our athletes representing our country, they’ll probably have a tinge of regret that they weren’t there.” But even with that controversy, Lovinger ultimately expects to have the same number of total advertisers in Beijing as he did in Pyeongchang: around 100, 40% of which will be new Olympics advertisers. And NBC Sports still was able to work with brand partners to debut new innovations during the Games. NBC will present two 30-minute windows of commercial-free coverage in prime time, Feb. 7 and Feb. 9 on both linear and digital, exclusively presented by Toyota to bring viewers uninterrupted coverage of figure skater Nathan Chen, one of Team Toyota’s athletes. Ratings shortfalls This month, NBCUniversal will feature more Winter Olympics coverage than ever—2,800 hours across NBC, streaming service Peacock, USA Networks, NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app—and “total consumption of the Games is likely to grow” across all platforms, says Lovinger. Despite that uptick and the record Super Bowl rates, NBCUniversal is only projecting that combined ad revenue for both events will be on par with 2018's $1.22 billion tally. That’s because the coveted NBC prime-time rating “is likely to come down” amid the rapid shifts in content consumption, admits Lovinger. The current measurement shortcomings also prevent the company from accurately monetizing its total multiplatform audience (including Peacock where, unlike the Tokyo Games, subscribers to the Premium tier will be able to livestream all of NBCUniversal’s Beijing coverage). “We’re going through a massive overhaul in consumption trends, and the economics of those trends haven’t completely caught up because the measurement of those trends hasn’t completely caught up,” says Lovinger. To that end, NBCUniversal will be undergoing a measurement test-and-learn with iSpot.tv during the Super Bowl and Winter Olympics, part of the latest step in the company’s efforts to create an alternative measurement strategy (see sidebar) that it hopes to be able to transact on during the 2024 Summer Olympics, and as soon as this year’s upfront. “We’re trying to find ways for marketers to get a clearer picture of who’s actually watching their commercials and what they’re doing once they do—and Nielsen hasn’t been able to do that for us,” says Lovinger. But until that alternative is ready, NBCUniversal continues to make Winter Olympics audience guarantees using its Total Audience Delivery metric. Several buyers told Adweek that this year’s Games' guarantees are roughly half of what they were in 2018—and several smaller deals did not have guarantees at all, meaning NBCU won’t be on the hook for makegoods if audiences are smaller than anticipated. (The Super Bowl deals, as always, are not guaranteed.) “NBC has done a pretty good job of adjusting their estimates,” says Carey. “So we anticipate that it’ll deliver on our expectations.” Meanwhile, Lovinger was promoted to a new role at the company last month—focusing solely on Olympic sales and partnerships as president, NBC advertising sales and partnerships—a position Yaccarino says is "essential to our future." Mark Marshall, who is president, advertising sales and client partnerships, NBCUniversal, and the rest of the sports team will lead the final Super Bowl oversight with Lovinger's input during the transition, but Lovinger still has plenty of business to write over the next week or so. He estimates marketers will spend approximately $400 million in scatter buys across broadcast and cable this month. And, given that for the 18 nights of NBC’s prime-time coverage, “we will likely deliver the equivalent of the three other broadcast networks combined, of course people are going to come to NBC for scatter in the Olympics,” says Lovinger. And he’ll be calling on his experience from four years ago handling the Super Bowl and Winter Olympics to propel him toward the finish line. “You really need to have a level head. And you need to be able to juggle a lot of priorities to manage through these chaotic times. You have to be prepared for them, expect them and embrace the wild ride.” For all the latest Super Bowl advertising news—who’s in, who’s out, teasers, full ads and more—check out Adweek’s Super Bowl 2022 Ad Tracker and the rest of our stories about the Big Game. And join us on the evening of Feb. 13 for the best in-game coverage of the commercials anywhere.