NBC Expects Record 2020 Olympics Ad Sales Topping $1.2 Billion

(Bloomberg) -- NBC expects to hit a record for advertising sales during the Summer Olympics next year in Tokyo, surpassing the $1.2 billion in commercials it sold for the 2016 Rio games.

Dan Lovinger, executive vice president for advertising sales at NBC Sports, said the company was “significantly ahead” of where it was at this point four years ago. The Rio games reaped the highest ad sales ever for an Olympics, he said. The $1.2 billion generated that year was 20% higher than the previous record for an Olympics, when NBC sold about $1 billion in commercial time for the 2012 London games.

The Tokyo time zone is considered favorable for NBC, as morning events will air live in prime time in the U.S.

Lovinger said the strongest categories so far include cars, travel, beverage, technology and financial services. He added that NBC was getting interest from Japanese companies that typically don’t advertise in the U.S.

“We’re closer to our goal at this point in both absolute dollars as well as percentage of the goal, and we expect to surpass that goal,” Lovinger said. “As you can imagine, our goal for Tokyo is higher than it was for Rio.”

NBC, owned by Comcast Corp., has the U.S. rights to the games through 2032, part of a 12-year, $7.65 billion extension it signed in 2014. Rights to the Tokyo games are part of NBC’s previous deal with the International Olympic Committee, in which the network paid $4.38 billion for the rights to air the Olympics from 2014 through 2020.

To contact the reporters on this story: Gerry Smith in New York at gsmith233@bloomberg.net;Eben Novy-Williams in New York at enovywilliam@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nick Turner at nturner7@bloomberg.net, John J. Edwards III, Rob Golum

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