NBC's Olympic Profits Will Top $100 Million

NBC paid almost $900 million for the television rights to the Beijing Olympics. That price turned out to be a bargain.

With six days to go until the closing ceremony, NBC officials are already celebrating big ratings and bigger advertising dollars, with well over $1 billion in revenue for profits that will go into the nine-figure range. The New York Times reports:

The Beijing Games have become the hottest event of the summer, with numbers that so far have been certifiably big - far beyond the network's expectations. The Games have drawn an average audience of about 30 million a night on NBC itself, millions more on NBC's cable channels, 30 million unique visitors to NBC's Olympics Web site, 6.3 million shared videos from the coverage streamed on the site and an ultimate profit that network executives project will surpass $100 million.

NBC has done a lot right, but the network's single most important accomplishment was convincing the International Olympic Committee to schedule the big swimming and gymnastics competitions for the morning in Beijing. That meant American audiences (at least those in the Eastern and Central time zones) could watch Michael Phelps and Nastia Liukin live in prime time, which meant huge ratings -- and huge profits -- for NBC.