NBC’s $12B Olympics bet stumbles, thanks to millennials
NEW YORK >> Back in June, Steve Burke described what he called his Olympics “nightmare.”
“We wake up someday and the ratings are down 20 percent,” the CEO of NBCUniversal said at a conference. “If that happens, my prediction would be that millennials had been in a Facebook bubble or a Snapchat bubble and the Olympics have come and they didn’t know it.”
He has escaped that with the Rio games this year — but not by much. Prime-time broadcast viewership has been down about 17 percent compared with the London games four years ago. And in the 18-to-49-year-old age group coveted by advertisers, it’s been even worse. That audience has been 25 percent smaller.
The Summer Olympics ratings slip, the first since 2000, raises fresh doubts about what used to be a sure thing: live sports would be a huge and growing draw no matter what. That’s why NBC parent Comcast Corp. paid $12 billion for exclusive U.S. broadcast rights to the Olympics through 2032. Others, including Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN, 21st Century Fox Inc., Time Warner Inc. and CBS Corp., have made long-term bets on football, baseball and basketball.
One issue is that many fans are getting older. The average age over the past decade of NFL and MLB viewers has increased by four and seven years, respectively, to 47 and 53, according to the blog Stratechery.
“Sports is less ingrained in the younger demographic,” said Brandon Ross, an analyst at BTIG Research. “It has been replaced by other things like video games and e-sports and Snapchat feeds.”
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19 responses to “NBC’s $12B Olympics bet stumbles, thanks to millennials”
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Oh, please.
The reason is because people don’t want to watch or listen to Costas and the rest of the PC crowd at NBC talking about inanities and “human interest” stories.
People are going on the net to stream the actual events rather than endless commercials and about 30 seconds of highlights on NBC.
Olympic games have become BORING. Who wants to watch tennis or golf as an olympic sport. They should just reduce the number of sports to the basics like track and field, swimming gymnastics, etc. The combination of boring sports, endless drivel commentators and commercials and most people refuse to watch the olympic games
Agree with Kansas Kiki and inverse. Once we won gold for 10m air rifle (bb gun), that did it for me. The ad nausium side story of the 19 year old girl from West Virginia and her rigorous training schedule to be the best BB gun shooter in the world…….I’m out.
Your utter lack of knowledge about the sport is astounding. Clearly too much time under water, lack of oxygen to the brain.
Match rifles do not shoot BBs, never did. They shoot .177 caliber pellets. The skill it takes to hold the rifle steady to hit the target at 10 meters is clearly a skill you admit you never will have.
Read and learn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_meter_air_rifle
Her groupings were most impressive.
Wait till they have the surfing event at that Big Wave Mecca of Tokyo.
Millennials are brighter than the ‘greatest generation,’ and we need to accept that reality. They recognize that sports is a dishonest, doping, deflate-gate, joke of a profiteering industry, and have no interest. They choose Bernie over the corrupt leftovers, don’t believe in owning cars, and are eating to save the planet, and know better.
Exhibit A may be LeBron James, the N.B.A. superstar who in July announced that he would be going back to rust-belt Cleveland after four glamorous years in Miami, becoming, at age 29, one of America’s wealthiest boomerang children.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/17/fashion/the-millennials-are-generation-nice.html
Not true at all. Millennials are no smarter than previous generations as proven by their inability to use and maintain simple office technology. Studies have proven if there are millennials in the office and the copier jams, they will act like it is not their problem. Finally a non millennial will realize these baboozes are lost, no clue what to do, fix the copier.
Actually they do own cars as you can’t use Uber and Lyft for everything at the lowest cost and convenience.
Eating to save the planet is an urban legend. Doesn’t make a bit of difference. Watch and learn what you clearly do not know.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c
Let’s hope so. The boomers started out full of idealism and good intentions,and look how we turned out. Badic human nature seems to be a stubborn limit to change, but maybe it will be better with this cohort…
Yeah, they’re brighter till the power goes out and all thier gadgets die off.
Oceanic should redesign their cable box. I hate fast forwarding through 2.5 hours of boring equestrian programs just to get to the last 30 minutes to see the USA girls gymnastics finals. In a computer one can click drag the scroll indicator needle to wherever you want to peek. Same happens when I record MMA fights on cable box. I hate when the ‘MAIN EVENT OF THE EVENING” means FFing for too long a time. Waste time.
I’m not a Millennial but I’m keenly interested in both Summer and Winter Olympic competition. Some events like all of the swimming, I would gladly watch all of the heats. I would watch all of the water polo as well as the distance and open water races as well as triathlon, gymnastics and a bunch of other sports. What I did not like this year was NBC’s coverage of the games. I thought it was pretty poor and that’s without even commenting about Ryan Seacrest whose reason for existence I still haven’t figured out.
I would hope that NBC gets the message that I’ve been hearing from people of almost every social and political persuasion. That message is that you guys did not do a good job this time around.
(BTW: I like equestrian competition but basketball bores me and I find a straight week of beach volleyball a little much. 🙂 )
Equestrian events don’t belong in the olympics. If they insist on keeping it in, at least put the horses on the medal stand instead of the riders.
Agree.
All negative comments are right on (except maybe for the one about Lebron that I’m not qualified to comment on). Too many ads–I did not watch any–; too many “human interest” stories–ditto; too many events on delay, too much drivel in the comments. That has been the case since network television took over, of course, but I’m gratified that Millennials get it. Besides that, the people in the NBC camera truck do not not understand soccer or volleyball or other sports. They play around with close-ups and weird camera angles and therefore lose track of the game. This has been a major source of complaint from the beginning as well. From A to Z, NBC and ABC and CBS suck with sports. ESPN isn’t that much better. (Why doesn’t anybody charge so much for ads that they can take fewer ad breaks?)
lower the advertising cost ,,,expectations ,,,bid less ,,,you do not need to make news …it is what it is…i can see them artificially exploiting the Game …we need balance in the other direction …
what if the real problem is “over bidding ?????and do not blame the share holders “we use to call it “in elastic ” back in the 70s
It is sort of misleading to say that because the television ratings are down for the Olympics that there is a lack of interest in the games. As years go by alternatives to TV has become more prevalent, including internet streaming, YouTube, and time-shifting viewing by DVRs. There has always been a large number of people with little interest in organized athletics such as what the Olympics offer. However, most ARE interested in the glorious spectacle that is the Olympics. I know I am.