http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/20/sports/olympics/20espnoly.html?ref=olympicsESPN is interested in acquiring the television rights to the 2014 and 2016 Olympics and would carry more of them live, regardless of the time zone, than NBC traditionally has done.
“Our DNA is different than theirs,” John Skipper, ESPN’s executive vice president for content said by telephone on Tuesday. “We serve sports fans. It’s hard in our culture to fathom tape-delaying in the same way they have. I’m not suggesting it wasn’t the smart thing for them to do, but it’s not our culture. We did Euro 2008 in the afternoon. We’ve done the World Cup in the middle of the morning. We have different audiences.”
If ESPN follows its Euro 2008/World Cup model, the live feeds would be carried to all time zones; when NBC shows events live in prime-time, they are seen in real-time in the Eastern and Central time zones, not in the Mountain and Pacific zones.
“It’s a beautiful property and NBC’s done great with it,” Skipper said.
The International Olympic Committee has not set a date for selling the TV rights to the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, and the 2016 Summer Games, whose host city will be chosen in October 2009 from Chicago, Rio de Janeiro, Madrid and Tokyo.
Skipper, who returned earlier this week from Beijing after attending the Summer Games, said NBC’s enormous success over the first 11 nights of the Games “probably forces us to change some of our calculations.”
“If you’re doing P&L’s,” he went on, referring to profits and losses, “these guys have done spectacularly. If I was holding the rights to this, this is a great time to be selling them.”
He said the extent of NBC’s success has surprised him. “On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d have to say it’s been a 10.5,” he said. “The Phelps thing couldn’t have worked better. I admire that they got swimming in the morning. Everything broke their way.”
Through 11 nights, NBC attracted an average of 29.6 million viewers, 3.4 million ahead of Athens in 2004. It has reached a total audience of 200 million, putting it on a course to surpass the 1996 Atlanta Games as the most-watched Summer Olympics ever and the most-viewed event ever on United States TV. The 17.2 rating through 11 days is the best for a Summer Olympics outside the United States since the 18.4 for Barcelona in 1992.
In 2003, the Disney-owned ESPN and ABC bid jointly for the 2010 and 2012 Games against Fox and NBC. NBC won the bidding at $2.2 billion, which included a worldwide I.O.C. sponsorship for General Electric, NBC’s parent company. Fox bid an estimated $1.3 billion and ESPN/ABC offered a revenue share, without any upfront money.
“I don’t think there’s a sense of regret about that,” Skipper said. “Maybe the timing wasn’t right, and maybe we weren’t ready for it. The I.O.C. made a sensible decision and NBC was more aggressive with a different calculation.”
Skipper said that ESPN was well-positioned with ABC as its broadcast outlet, multiple ESPN cable networks, espn.com and extensive video streaming capabilities. “There’s nothing that NBC has that we don’t have the assets to replicate and do better,” he said.
ESPN/ABC would certainly encounter NBC at a 2014-16 auction, with Fox as a third bidder. Fox has never televised the Olympics, but David Hill, chairman of the Fox Sports Television Group, covets them and admires ABC Sports’ legacy of broadcasting them.
“The Olympics have always been an intriguing property for us,” said Dan Bell, a spokesman for Fox Sports. But Leslie Anne Wade, a spokeswoman for CBS Sports, said, “We might look into it, but it’s really too early to talk about a genuine level of interest.”
ABC carried 10 Olympics between 1964 and 1988. NBC is televising its 11th, including the 1980 Moscow Games that the United States boycotted; NBC sent a production crew to the Soviet Union and showed weekend highlights.