Blog: Olympics

COVID-19 exposed live entertainment as a vulnerable asset class , specifically following the pandemic-enforced postponement of live sports . One of the hardest hit during this hiatus and ensuing uncertainty has been athletics, which saw its largest engagement driver and the ‘greatest show on earth’ in the Olympic games postponed till 2021 .

With Comcast’s NBCUniversal-owned Peacock launching today (July 15th), sports fans will be excited ahead of NBCU’s repositioning of its English Premier League (EPL) rights, giving paying subscribers access to 175 fixtures for the 2020/2021 season on its over-the-top (OTT) streaming service.

The global COVID-19 pandemic is increasing pressure on the viability of emerging and legacy media business models, and is already having an unprecedented impact on the sports industry. An unprecedented swathe of cancelled sports events has left rights holders unable to monetise their existing broadcasting of rights within tightly-scheduled windows.

The president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, said in an interview that while genres like sport simulators are still in the running to be considered for 2024, the Olympics have no interest in promoting anything to do with violence and killing.

The 2016 Rio Olympics were bitter sweet for NBCUniversal. The US Network which holds the exclusive US TV broadcasting rights for the Olympics announced both record ad revenues and at the same time a decline in TV viewers compared with the 2012 London Olympics.