Olympics on NBC
NBC Olympics is the commercial name for the NBC Sports-produced broadcasts of the Summer and Winter Olympic Games as shown in the United States on NBCUniversal and Versant platforms. They include the NBC broadcast network and as well as the cable networks operated by Versant under an agreement with NBC Universal; Spanish language network Telemundo; and streaming on the NBC Sports app, NBCOlympics.com, and Peacock. The event telecasts during the Olympics have aired primarily in the evening and on weekend afternoons on NBC, and varying times on its cable networks. Additional live coverage is available on the aforementioned streaming platforms.
The on-air title of the telecasts, as typically announced at the start of each broadcast and during sponsor billboards is always the official name of the games in question – for example, The Games of the XXIX Olympiad for the 2008 Summer Games. However, promotional logos may reflect the more common location-and-year name format, such as "Beijing 2008".
NBC has held the American broadcasting rights to the Summer Olympic Games since the 1988 games and the rights to the Winter Olympic Games since the 2002 games. In 2011, NBC agreed to a $4.38 billion contract with the International Olympic Committee to broadcast the Olympics through the 2020 games, the most expensive television rights deal in Olympic history. NBC then agreed to a $7.75 billion contract extension on May 7, 2014, to air the Olympics through the 2032 games. NBC also acquired the American television rights to the Youth Olympic Games, beginning in 2014, and the Paralympic Games for the 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020 editions. NBC announced more than 1,200 hours of coverage for the 2020 games, called "unprecedented" by the International Paralympic Committee. In March 2025, NBC signed a $3 billion extension for both the 2034 Winter and 2036 Summer games. NBC is one of the major sources of revenue for the International Olympic Committee.
NBC's telecasts of the Olympics have been criticized for the tape delaying of events, spoiling the results of events prior to their own tape-delayed broadcast of those events, editing of its broadcasts to resemble an emotionally appealing program meant to entertain rather than a straight live sports event, and avoiding controversial subjects such as material critical of Russia at the 2014 Olympics. Since the 2012 Summer Olympics, live events have been continually added to NBC's cable networks and streaming platforms, rivaling the edited, tape-delayed broadcasts that traditionally air on the NBC broadcast network's primetime coverage.
History
1964 Summer
televised its first Olympic Games in 1964, when it broadcast that year's Summer Olympics from Tokyo. NBC originally had intended to film the events from Tokyo but the Syncom team had a 1-hour test on the Syncom 3 satellite and it was discovered that it can transmit up to two hours from the United States to Japan as with signals from the West Coast. NBC needed approval from the FCC. It approved, thus giving NBC satellite coverage of the Olympics, allowing NBC to avoid flight expenses and having to fly as many tapes. NBC's telecast of the opening ceremonies that year marked the first color broadcast televised live via satellite back to the United States.The Olympic competition itself was broadcast in black-and-white. Through its use of the Syncom 3 satellite, a daily highlights package could be seen a few hours after the events took place; otherwise, videotape canisters were flown across the Pacific Ocean and were broadcast to American viewers the following day.
Serving as anchor was Bill Henry, then NBC News Tokyo bureau chief, who had extensive experience in both print and broadcast news. Play-by-play commentators included Bud Palmer and Jim Simpson, while former Olympians Rafer Johnson and Murray Rose served as analysts.
1972 Winter
NBC first televised the Winter Olympic Games in 1972. Anchored by Curt Gowdy, much of the coverage actually was broadcast live since alpine skiing and long track speed skating were held in the morning, which corresponded to prime time on the East Coast of the United States. Although NBC bought the television rights from the Sapporo Olympics group, they didn't know that they had to make a deal with NHK for broadcast booths at each venue. By the time NBC found out, it was too late. The booths had been built and there were none to spare. Consequently, everyone worked off monitors.A young sportscaster making his network television debut at Sapporo was a 26-year-old Al Michaels, who did hockey play-by-play during the games. Eight years later, he would call the famous 1980 "Miracle On Ice" at that year's Winter Games in Lake Placid for ABC Sports. Other sportscasters utilized by NBC included Jim Simpson, Jay Randolph, Billy Kidd, Peggy Fleming, Art Devlin, and Terry McDermott.
1980 boycott
NBC had won the U.S. broadcast rights for the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, Russia, but when the United States Olympic Committee kept U.S. athletes home to honor the boycott announced by President Jimmy Carter in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the telecasts were greatly scaled back. In the end, what had been 150 hours of scheduled coverage, had substantially decreased to just a few hours. Highlights were fed to local NBC stations for use on their local newscasts. Many affiliates, however, refused to show the Olympic highlights on their local news or clear airtime for the few hours of coverage NBC did present.NBC's extensive coverage was canceled before a prime time anchor had been named; it was said that NBC Nightly News anchor John Chancellor, along with sportscasters Bryant Gumbel and Dick Enberg, were reportedly being considered for the prime time studio host role. Bryant Gumbel ultimately served as Seoul primetime host in 1988 while Dick Enberg co-hosted the Ceremonies through the 1996 closing.
NBC Sports executive Don Ohlmeyer had originally commissioned to use "1980", an instrumental theme written by Herb Alpert, for NBC's planned coverage of the Summer Olympics in Moscow. It would ultimately be used seven years later as the official theme song for NBC's telecast of the 1986 FIFA World Cup in Mexico.
1988 Summer
NBC then bid for, and won, the rights to televise the 1988 Summer Olympics. Due to American television companies providing most of the revenue for the organizers, they agreed to schedule most of the team finals in the afternoon, which corresponded to prime time of the previous night in the United States.Today co-anchor Bryant Gumbel was the prime time host that year; Bob Costas hosted the late-night telecasts while Jane Pauley was one of the hosts of early-morning coverage. Gumbel and Dick Enberg were co-hosts for the opening and closing ceremonies.
Michael Weisman led a team covering the 1988 Summer Olympics for the network. One of those employees was future NBC Entertainment and CNN President Jeff Zucker, who Weisman hired as a researcher.
Weisman considered producing the Olympics a challenge, saying, "my mandate is to shatter the mystique that only ABC can do the Olympics." Weisman assembled the "Seoul Searchers," a group of specialized sports reporters tasked with following breaking news during the Games. Some criticized the journalistic focus to the games. Weisman, however, defended the tone, saying "the criticism we hear is that people want to hear positive news... we are not the American team. We are clearly rooting for the American team, but we're not going to whitewash anything." Other ideas Weisman introduced for the Olympics included miniature "point of view cameras" for specific events such as the pole vault and gymnastics; the "Olympic Chronicles," profiles which highlighted athletes and moments from Olympics past; and an Olympic soundtrack which included an original Whitney Houston song, "One Moment in Time". NBC won seven Emmy Awards for their Olympic coverage.
A curious result was that, since in the United States, the 1988 NFL season had just started, NBC would plug the holes with well-known older broadcasters such as Curt Gowdy, Ray Scott and Merle Harmon, among others. Marv Albert was calling boxing during the Olympics alongside Ferdie Pacheco. Meanwhile, Don Criqui and Bob Trumpy called swimming and volleyball respectively. Charlie Jones called track and field and Jimmy Cefalo served as the daytime host. Bob Costas and Gayle Gardner were NBC's late night hosts. Dick Enberg served as host for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies and called men's basketball and gymnastics. Jay Randolph called baseball during the Olympics alongside Jim Kaat.
1992 Summer
Just as his mentor Roone Arledge had before over at ABC, Dick Ebersol, who took over NBC Sports in 1989, decided to make the Olympics a staple of NBC's sports television schedule. NBC continued its Summer Games coverage into the next decade, with both the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona and the 1996 Summer Olympics. For the 1992 games, Ebersol surprised even his own staff as well as everybody else by paying a then record $401 million for the 1992 games. NBC then paid $456 million to broadcast the 1996 Olympics. Previously hosting late night coverage in Seoul, Bob Costas made his debut, as primetime host, in Barcelona. It is a role that he held through the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics.Among the sportscasters that NBC utilized in 1992 were Marv Albert, Mike Fratello, and Quinn Buckner on basketball, Bob Trumpy, Al Bernstein, and Beasley Reece on boxing, Tom Hammond, Charlie Jones Michele Mitchell, and Wendy Lian Williams on diving, Terry Leibel and Melanie Smith Taylor on equestrian, Jim Donovan and Seamus Malin on soccer, John Tesh, Greg Lewis, Tim Daggett, Elfi Schlegel, Wendy Hilliard, Peter Vidmar, and Julianne McNamara on gymnastics, Joel Meyers on rowing, Charlie Jones, Mary Wayte, and Mike O'Brien on swimming, Al Trautwig and Tracie Ruiz-Conforto on synchronized swimming, Bud Collins, Tracy Austin, Chris Evert, and Vitas Gerulaitis on tennis, Tom Hammond, Craig Masback, and Dwight Stones on track and field, Chris Marlowe and Paul Sunderland on volleyball, Charlie Jones and Jim Kruse on water polo, and Russ Hellickson and Jeff Blatnick on wrestling.
In order to defray costs of airing the games, the network teamed up with Cablevision for the Triplecast. The service consisted of red, white, and blue channels that allowed the viewer to watch anything they wanted even before it aired in the network's primetime telecast. However, the service was a dismal failure losing $100 million and had only 200,000 subscribers. In addition, the main network's coverage was cannibalized to the extent it seemed that the main coverage was overproduced and that viewers knew some results about 10 hours before they were aired over the air on NBC. For Atlanta, NBC had no supplemental cable coverage.