In 2011, the I.O.C. was “blown away” by Comcast’s $4.38 bid for the media rights to the Olympics from 2014 through 2020. The 2014 Sochi Games comprised $775 million of the deal, which Comcast eventually won. The price may be exorbitant, but by most accounts, the 2014 Winter Olympics was a big victory for NBC.
According to Richard Sandomir of the New York Times: “NBC averaged 21.4 million viewers a night. That is dandy by anyone’s standard: it is like carrying Sunday Night Football, which averaged 21.7 million viewers last season, every night.”
More, according to research from iSpot.tv, six brands – Chevrolet, AT&T, Geico, McDonald’s, Visa, and BMW – each spent more than $50 million to broadcast during the Games. Procter & Gamble was not a top-15 spender, yet it was the biggest digital winner of all brands that advertised during the Games.P&G’s “Thank You Mom” was viewed more than 17 million times and drove the most social actions – 205,000 across Facebook, Twitter, You Tube and iSpot.tv – since the Games began on February 7.
The most searched ads on Google, Bing, and Yahoo! combined were McDonald’s “Celebrate with a Bite” and Cadillac’s “Work Hard,” each coming in with just under 500,000 searches within minutes of airing.