The XXII Olympic Winter Games held in Sochi, Russia, belong to NBC, at least from the standpoint of traditional media coverage. Comcast Corp.’s (NASDAQ: CMCSA) NBCUniveral unit paid $4.38 billion for the U.S. media rights to four Olympics taking place between from 2014 to 2020. The network needs to recoup the money, beginning at Sochi, mostly through television advertising. It may not have expected that it would not only vie with traditional media for coverage, but would have its ratings tested by social media as well.
It is enough that NBC will have to contend with stories, photos, and video from general news outlets like CNN. Sports websites also have mobbed the event with reporters, video cameras and analysis. Huge sports sites like Sports Illustrated, The Bleacher Report, ESPN.com and the sports section of USAToday.com have made large investments in the coverage, which is bound to siphon off some of the NBC and NBC Sports online audiences.
Probably for the first time, non-traditional media will become part of the Olympic anchor network’s rivals. The Olympic Games’ official Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) feed, @Olympics, has more than 2.4 million followers. The U.S. Olympic Team feed, @USOlympic, has 491,000. And these are just two of an army of Twitter feeds offering instant data, analysis and medal counts. People barely need to watch NBC’s coverage at all, beyond live coverage.
Facebook Inc.’s (NASDAQ: FB) Olympics page — The Olympics Games — has more than 6 million likes. The U.S. Olympics Team has over 2.5 million. These will grow over the course of the two weeks of the Sochi games. And, as is true with Twitter, thousands and thousands of sites devoted to some part of the games will draw people who, just a decade ago, would only have had access to information via traditional media.
Perhaps the greatest challenge NBC faces is Google Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) YouTube. Countless videos covering some part of the games have been posted to the huge site, which has hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide. There are already dozens of clips of Olympic events, analysis, and commentary which have had more than 100,000 views. And, several have over one million. NBC also has to contend with videos made by athletes’ sponsors. Procter & Gamble Co. (NYSE: PG) has a YouTube section devoted to downhill skier Mikaela Shiffrin that’s been viewed 1.2 million times. That is bound to increase substantially as she progress through the competition.
NBC is facing what traditional networks will from now on. Any of them can put up billions of dollars to televise the games. Media which spend nothing will be contending for viewer and advertising dollars. New media and social media have guaranteed that.
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