Despite its special Silverlight-powered Website and more than 2,000 hours of online video, it looks like NBC flubbed its opportunity to make its Olympics Web revenues more than a rounding error. NBCOlympics.com may have streamed 72 million videos and racked up 1.2 billion pageviews, but Yahoo Sports still edged it out with an average of 4.7 million visitors a day versus 4.3 million (source: Nieisen Online). And Yahoo didn’t even have video. NBC is spinning its numbers as a success to the New York Times today, in response an estimate eMarketer put out on Friday that NBC’s Olympics video ad revenues came to only $5.75 million. That compares to $23 million that CBS made from video ads when it streamed the NCAA basketball tournament live on its Website in March.
Surely, NBC should have been able to make more money from Olympics Web video than CBS did from March Madness. But NBC decided to limit what people could see online, especially live streams, in favor of its TV coverage because it feared cannibalizing its TV audience. Those fears proved to be unfounded because given the choice, most people would rather watch the Olympics on TV than online. But NBC missed a big opportunity here to expand its audience by streaming events it gave short shrift on TV (i.e., anything that wasn’t women’s beach volleyball or sports where the U.S. didn’t have a good chance of earning a medal).
The eMarketer estimate does not include banner-ad revenue generated by those 1.2 billion pageviews. Those could have been more than the video-ad revenue, depending on the CPMs—for instance a $10 CPM would have generated $12 million. It’s still a rounding error compared to the $1 billion in revenues that NBC made from the Olympics, most of that from TV ads. Right?
Wrong. NBC paid $900 million for exclusive video rights to the Olympics, meaning that its profits will be about $100 million. It doesn’t take much to move that profit needle. After Website and bandwidth costs, online revenues are pretty much gravy. Think of it this way: Every $25 million above costs would have resulted in 25 percent more profits.
But NBC still thinks of the Web as nothing more than an experiment.
If $100 million is pocket change, then please give me $100 million.
Thanks!
they should have used flash. i know many people who were deterred from their page because of the silverlight requirement. they would download it but not know how to run it. they also made their portal difficult to navigate videos. off network distro (to yahoo) of videos would have been wise as well.
Really? Honestly, I would guess that most people would not know the difference.
From what I understand, the main issue was availability of content not the technology used.
Flash or Silverlight, didn’t really matter. It may have deterred some, but not enough to matter. The lack of content, the lack of ability to find the content you wanted when it was there, the completely uncut video of an empty arena for 15 minutes, and the moronic idea to have some things exclusive to TV is what hurt them. All it really did was show me that going to the Olympics would be boring and watching it on a broadcast that adds commentary and replays, and cuts out the waiting, is a lot more fun.
Let’s forget about NBC’s obvious failure here and acknowledge microsofts huge win with it’s huge number of new silverlight capable machines.
Silverlight FTL!
I’d be interested to see how much better they’d have done by choosing an entrenched video format.
Where does NBC include the amount MSFT paid them to use SL over flash?
Agreed. MSFT paid big to get lots of folks to download Silverlight for the first time.
Where does NBC include the amount MSFT paid them to use SL over flash?
EXACTLY
the issue is available online content, not SL vs. flash. the quality of online content (what little there was) was v. high.
Actually, The Issue of this post is the revenue NBC realized from its online strategy. Fees paid by MS to NBC for SL (hah) are perfectly germane.
YouTube had a lot of highlights…granted they were taking down but they used Flash at the end of the day and won in streams.
http://www.divi...etrics-summary/
I wonder if Bob Costas as color commentary for the TV audience was a strategic ploy to push more online viewing?
I found the TV coverage annoying as well because NBC only played events where the US was successful. This took out the suspense of most of the events.
Forgive my ignorance on this. But doesn’t NBC primarily serve/target the US market, whereas Yahoo has an international audience?
NBC prevented anyone outside of the US from using their site unless you hid your IP address. So they intentionally limited themselves. My friends (US citizens living outside the US) could not easily view the games.
NBC was forced to limit the coverage to US. If they wanted to open it up, they’d would have to pay IOC more.
NBC flopped in a major way. Its unfortunate, the big guys still don’t get it.
I was completely disappointed about not being able to see the replays of all events online. I watch the tv for the first viewing and then the internet for all subsequent viewings. I think they missed the boat on that one.
Nice piece that focuses on the business logic. Purely from the user side, I don’t have a TV, depend totally on online content. It’s clear their web strategy was an afterthought. Streaming full games without commentary is a really clunky way to make online content less of a priority. Having a web site that is unclear to navigate and not easy to search is no good for anyone. And their ad strategy was noticeably strange. In watching maybe 15 hours of Olympics over the past 2 weeks I saw the trailer for the same movie 50 times, at least. No joke. I can recite it verbatim.
This is the strategy of a company that doesn’t trust online content.
I totally agree with this !
The video fidelity of the online content may have been good, but everything else sucks! Where was the editing? For lesser known sports (e.g. kayaking) there was a handful of edited and commented clips, and all the other content was dumped into a 3.5 hr long block, with no commentary and no indexing. Would it really have taken so long for someone to put some bookmarks / indexes into it?
Was there really no company in the world that had English language commentary that NBC could have done a deal with?
They totally missed the point of online / interactive content. They didn’t only fail to embrace the new features that interactivity allows, they even forgot the old ones (like commentary) !
They made the content *not worth watching*.
Poor show MSNBC, poor show…
I wonder if by 2012 the BBC will be able to serve Olympic content to the US?
And how much did MSFT pay to make SL the platform??
tom
Not that I’m interested in silverlight, but it doesn’t work on ppc macs anyway.
What’s so hard about live streaming (without silverlight) and offering ad-supported downloads? TONS of people utilized thepiratebay for high-res downloads of the events. But I imagine they could’ve taken considerable traffic themselves if they offered high-res, ad-supported, legal downloads.
My experience is that if it wasn’t on TV, there isn’t a torrent. Anything more obscure than volleyball and you’re stuck with the NBC site.
The whole coverage was a joke. Beijing being 15 hours ahead of us made it very difficult. Between cable/satelite, internet, we should have been able to seeany event live. Who cares if its 4AM in the morning. There is some myth thanks to Nielsen that prime time really even exists. With DVRs Tivo or anty other recording of live Tv stream you use;we make our own primetime. Some series some even wait for DVD to quell the long drawn out tv season. I will give credit to NBC for realizing this and allowing you to sse the sitcoms and dramas at your leisure. They sould have donethat with the olympics.
I’d love to see how the stats compare to the BBC in the UK. BBC live streamed their television coverage via the iPlayer. So when at home I watched it on TV and when at work I had it on in the background as streaming flash. Sure it wasn’t the same quality, but hell I was working.
They backed this up with live text commentary that they do for most sports (in addition to the TV audio commentary) as well as interesting blogs etc etc.
Of course the BBC doesn’t have advertising, but it certainly did wonders for the brand, as well as the country (by enabling people to follow what was going on and talk about)
I didn’t see the US coverage but it would be interesting for someone who has had access to both, to say which worked better.
Wow thats too bad for NBC, as a whole I felt they did just focus on the US getting wins rather than just showing everything else.
I boycotted the Olympics on NBC because they just don’t get it. They try to control their videos and pretty soon it will come back and bite them in the ass. I’m waiting for one person to buy the Phelps’ wins and load it up on YouTube. NBC – wake up already. You can’t control it and the more you try to – the harder people will try to take you down.
I watched all the video I wanted via torrents – if they won’t give me what I want on TV with ads, I’ll get it on the net w/o ads.
you hit the nail on the head, schonfeld
I would have gladly paid $20, maybe $30 or $40 to access all or most of the live events via nbcolympics.com. As a matter of fact, I would prefer to pay a flat fee and have no ads interrupt my viewing experience. Working with NBC’s web video limitations was an exercise in frustration. Reminds me of the RIAA’s attitude and actions towards their customers. I hope NBC is reading these comments and taking notes.
In Canada, the CBC streamed all of their coverage — both the TV feed with ads and commentators, as well as upwards of 9 other un-commentated streams from the various event cameras around the Games. It revolutionized my watching as I could tune in at any time to hear live races/commentary as well as watch heats and prelims of the other events.
I watched probably 75-85% of the entire games as a result.!! A huge change in my olympics watching which usually favours Winter Olympics.
As a net watcher, I know I’m in like 2% of viewing audience, but since I watched plenty of ads before every feed loaded and also a handful on the regular TV stream, I think I got targeted just as well had I watched on Cable TV.
Seriously, revolutionized my live sports/olympics/tv watching experience
I’m also in Canada, and had the exact same experience – watched at least 75% (probably closer to 90%) of the Olympics online at cbc.ca and feel as though I got a more complete Olympic viewing experience than I’ve ever had before. I discovered I enjoyed watching sports I don’t recall seeing much of before on Olympic TV coverage: fencing, water polo, modern pentathalon and dressage, to name a few. Opened up a whole new world of sports for me! “Revolutionized” indeed!!
Chris & Tami: I wished I’d thought to check out the CBC’s coverage. I could say that I’ll check it out next time, but given that next time is 4 long years away, that makes me feel like I missed out.
You watched 85% of 2000 hours?
That’s 70 days with 24 hours of programming.
And you watched that In a timespan of 15 days?
That’s a indeed a revolution!
Tell us how you did it. Or apply for a patent first.
—
Even if you only watched 85% of a *single* 24 hour non-stop stream that would give you just 3.6 hours a day for sleeping. Are you Marissa Meyer of the GOOG?
whoops, I meant “when I watched the Olympics, I turned to the internet (CBC.ca) at least 75% of the time rather than turning on the TV”. I probably did watch at least 50% of the total Olympic coverage, though, as it was mainly on before and after I went to work. My social life and sleeping patterns did take a major hit during the games!
Just as an aside, there was no Silverlight to download for the CBC coverage.
Not interested in installing Silverlight, never even visited the website!
I visited the website, but clicked away when SL was required to continue.
Oh get over it. You’ll download it one day.
The loss is entirely yours. Enjoy! I installed Silverlight and the videos – that were available anyways – were spectacular by the standards of web video.
Prefer that Flash clipboard hole, eh?
I agree that the online feeds were shady especially minus commentary but that’s not the reason they didn’t bank like March Madness. I think people are forgetting that March Madness is during work hours so of course more people are going to be sittin at work watchin the feeds. I’m not staying up til 2am to watch something when I can easily avoid any outcomes until I watch the coverage later. Plus they have the replay videos which Im sure will continue to generate funds as people go back and watch the 4×100 swim relay over and over. You can only do so much when the majority of the events were in the middle of the night and I didn’t want people talking about the results the next day when they stayed up and I didn’t.
TechCrunch is spinning this wrong… I am sure that even if online ad sales were low, NBCU pocketed some nice “revenue” from the Microsoft deal. Does anyone know the value of THAT agreement?
http://hmmconve...nt.blogspot.com
More people likely visited Yahoo Sports for coverage because it’s such a popular home page. Yahoo was constantly posting news of events which is why they got the traffic. Not to mention the fact that online coverage was only available in the US.
I found the entire Silverlight/NBC online effort to be great. Silverlight impressed me…it’s new yet competes well against Flash. I’m not a MS fanboy, but develop in various technologies. I like Silverlight in many ways but appreciate the ease of development that Flash provides. My $.02.
I agree with both your points. Yahoo made out like a bandit as they didn’t have to pay the IOC a dime for the Olympics content.
I only watched a few of the vidoes online but was very impressed with Silverlight quality
There were a few big disappointments in the online coverage. One was that if you did want to see something replayed online, they often gave the result in a top banner bar while the video played. For example, the 400M relay bore the caption “US Wins the Gold in the 400M!” So much for keeping us surprised.
Many of the non-televised events were available online. While I appreciated the non-edited format, it’s like they just threw it up there. I tried to watch the whitewater paddling, and it was a 2 hour clip. No commentators, no editing. When they were in-between heats, there was 5 or 10 minutes of dead space. The lack of editing I understand, given the resources that would require. But I know there were US commentators there, and they never included that commentary.
For example, the 400M relay bore the caption “US Wins the Gold in the 400M!”
Genius.
Loved the high def coverage. I wanted to use the website but no way i would use silverlight. So they blew it in my view.
you make me laugh. If you wanted to watch high def video then install silverlight, why such hatred. Did MS kill your first born or something?
Maybe people realize they don’t need another vector for noisy ads.
The website – particularly for searching for video, was just terrible. Difficult to find anything using the site.
I totally agree with you inthewoods. It was impossible to find videos of anything the US didn’t win/have a chance of winning. I searched on nbcolympics and couldn’t find the 400m finals race. if you can find it, send me the URL please!
Why should we be subject to the monopoly of NBC?
I was extremely disappointed in their online business. The lack of announcing alone really killed it – as much as I’ll rag on football announcers, unless you know the strategy of handball intimately, you need the announcers to fill in the gaps. They’re whole online play is very half assed – if they’re concerned about cannibalized TV viewers, why not run the same ads online? I mean, they give away their broadcasts free to users, so what’s the hang up?
I am rather certain the reason there was no commentary for some of the live feeds is that they were using IOC provided house feeds. These feeds would be available to broadcasters around the world…
I would argue it would have been nice to see the COMMUNITY provide such functionality…
Don’t forget the article about how the net p2p had HD definition footage up, and more of it, faster than NBC this year…
Great post. Completely agree. Being old media folks, they left a lot of money on the table out of foolish fears.
It’s been said above, but I think Silverlight is the culprit. I never have, and don’t plan to, download it. Ditto on family and coworkers who’ve done the same.
oh i downloaded it long enough to watch their videos. then promptly uninstalled it out of spite.
sorry but you have no proof of that. Silverlight as a technology is perfectly capable of delivering a great olympics experience. Just because you have something personal against the technology doesnt mean the technology is a failure.
Its more the decisions that NBC made regarding their content that made the ncbolympics.com a success/failure.
My opinion = success
Seriously? You sound kinda whiny. Would you rather have flash? Silverlight is just another closed platform but at least it is a good one. The video was good quality, the features were there, and it held under load. What else is there?
Red5 is open source.
I am saying it one more time. Its not about money, or how this cable companies want me to watch it. It is the spirit. NBC completely ruined the spirit, excitement, entertainment, the love of sports. I cannot act as if I am watching the games just now when the whole world knew the results already 12 hours back. What is the big problem if you show the games real lives one time and recorded telecast one more time? And why should I watch it on a small computer screen when I have a 60 inch lcd tv at my home? I plan to be in London for the next olympics or some other country who wont spoil my spirit of sports. Just I want to enjoy the moment.
100% correct Shaun. Although I am not in the US haven’t had the same experience as vast number of commentators here, I still feel the spirit of sports was lost in all this. If having access to the coverage of Olympics is made extremely difficult or unaffordable, it really has big impact on how people perceive the event. Although our local TV covered all the events in a delayed telecast, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of hopelessness in this day and age of technological advancement. For the first time, I couldn’t care less about Olympics simply because access to the coverage was so bad. Even World Cup Soccer or Rugby get’s much better coverage.
Please anyone who can find the videos of the 4×100m finals and the 400m finals mens and womens, send me the URLs. I could not for the life of me find them on nbcolympics (I searched runner’s names, event name, everything!).
It would have done them so much better to have allowed live streaming – America would have loved NBC. Now everyone just hates it.
Why the hate for silverlight?
because it breaks the web?
standards, plz.
breaks the web??? it is by basic design built on standards. And it is their first major product that is grounded in openness..
Get your facts straight before saying stupid things!
because Microsoft is a bully and needs to learn how to invent its own technologies.
Being standards compliant AND inventing own technologies is a bit hard, don’t you think?
Riffic, W, EH, Henry Miller, Rick Curran: you’re so dogmatic that I guess you must have been members of the Chinese Communist Party in the 60s… (in this or a previous life)
I was one of the unlucky ones without Cable during the Olympics and I tried and successfully failed watching even one event online through the NBC silverlight or whatever… the streaming was awful… couple of times it froze the browser and my computer… had to kill the browser session to get it back.
I never blamed my internet as I watch online movies and documentaries nearly everyday.
A mere $100MM from old fashioned media?!
Silly NBC, they could have cannibalized their TV coverage by putting it online and had [pinky to mouth] “Ten MILLION dollars!”
NBC should have let the guys over at hulu handle it for them. I realize the decisions were (presumably) made years before hulu was even born…. but still!
“It’s been said above, but I think Silverlight is the culprit. I never have, and don’t plan to, download it. ”
Hey all you Silverlight/Microsoft haters, glad you missed the wonderful experience I saw with beautiful widescreen video. Everything worked for me: bandwidth was stable, 4-in-one control room was a nice touch. Don’t have any real complaints, and I don’t have some anti-Microsoft chip on my shoulder that precludes me from enjoying the experience.
Keep your head in the sand. We don’t miss you one bit.
Didn’t have to miss a thing. install, watch, uninstall. You should really learn to hate Microsoft. Otherwise you’re part of the problem.
nice mate.. i had the same experience. Even if it were flash video id feel the same way. Why do people hate MS so much, its sad because theres worse things in the world to worry about.
ps. W you need to seek some hatred management. I can only guess that you tried to apply for a job at MS and didnt get in. Those psychological profile interviews are a bastard to pass!
I think its wrong to compare NBC’s online efforts with YAHOO .. as someone above suggests, compare with BBC or CBC and then you’ll have a better idea.
Still, I agree that they made the same error they have made in every Olympics in thinking that Americans just want to watch Americans.
nowhere in the world did the 2008 olympics right ..
Interesting…but I wonder if Nielsen and eMarketer are way off due to the fact that they rely on panel based measures, rather than a combination of panel based and direct web measures…NBC is using Quantcast (3rd party provider) and specifically with the Olympics in mind for this very reason – perhaps sharing that information publicly would finally trump Nielsen, ComScore, and others that claim that “their metrics are unbiased because they’re a neutral 3rd party.” Well, so is Quantcast and its far more reliable!
I couldn’t agree more.. However the restrictions NBC placed on the service may only be upfront issues. Once a user has decided they want to use the service, these may become moot (just as how people put up with commercials because they’ve decided they want to watch the programming).
However the poor information design of the site can’t be overlooked. My take on this:
http://www.trip...ailed-business/
It surprises me that readers of TechCrunch have a hard time finding things via search. I used the site daily during the Olympics and found each and every clip that I wanted to see. I loved the video quality and found the site easy to use. I was even able to see events that I would not normally watch or that US TV would not broadcast. Yes the dead air was a bit much but umm…you can jump the video to the good parts.
So I say GOOD JOB to NBC. I’m sure they will learn from this and the next coverage will be even better.
I remember growing up watching Jim McKay’s olympics on ABC. I learned about weightlifting, ping-pong, kayaking, etc. ABC’s attitude was that it was the “wide world of sports” and introduced us to the breadth of athletic competition.
NBC thinks of it as an over-produced reality show. At least they dialed back the “profile” stories this time and showed us the amazing men and women’s 4×100 relays even though US was out of it. But the online coverage was supposed to supplement, but it disappointed. I couldn’t watch the men’s volleyball gold medal game live anywhere, even though the US was in it!
I hear that ESPN is going to bid on a future Olympics. They were quoted as saying that they couldn’t imagine tape-delaying an event… “that’s just not in their DNA”.
Silverlight open! Please get the facts.
The background on Microsoft’s Silverlight anti-competitive strategy is well documented in this “International Herald Tribune” article >
http://www.iht....gy/stream11.php
To accept using SIlverlight technology is to accept that there is nothing wrong with anti-competitive behavior.
It appears that you did not read the article. Yes, it does say that Microsoft is “looking for ways to gain proprietary advantage”. But isn’t this exactly what every tech business must do in order to make a profit? You would think people would be thrilled that there is now some strong competition for Flash, which owns 99% of the market. Oh, right, you only lilke competetion when it comes from one of your fan-boy favorites. This whole TechCrunch MS hate thing (both the editorial slant and the comments of its readers) is getting annoying.
Yes, it does say that Microsoft is “looking for ways to gain proprietary advantage”. But isn’t this exactly what every tech business must do in order to make a profit?
Um, no. Ever heard of “providing a better product?” You know, a free market solution that doesn’t rely on monopolistic goals.
well, frankly, it is a better product than flash.
exactly. SL is a superior product. period.
Yeah I was hoping to see some of the non-superstar sports (i.e. beyond volleyball, swimming, gymnastics, and footraces).
Weightlifting and wresting didn’t come on, even on the secondary 24/7 Olympics channels on Dish, as far as I could tell. I would have loved to have seen those. Other obscure sports would have been fun too, just for the hell of it.
Despite that I still enjoyed it, even if it did at times feel like a soup of Phelps, Bolt, and gratuitous booty shots of female beach volleyball players.
Dear John s .. you said”Yes, it does say that Microsoft is “looking for ways to gain proprietary advantage”. But isn’t this exactly what every tech business must do in order to make a profit?”
Answer – no it isn’t.
Offering superior quality products and services is “the what”. Just look at how Red Hat uses non-proprietary technology to create a half billion dollar company.
And what is annoying is that Microsoft continues to get away with anti-competitive behavior, despite the fact that the United States is supposed to be the land of fair competition.
You should have been in the UK for the Olympics. The BBC did a superb job of delivering great coverage, commentary, navigation, analysis etc etc etc. Almost all the Olympics I watched were via the BBC website and iPlayer – no need for TV whatsoever.
Of course someone will raise the fact that the BBC doesn’t need to worry about ad revenue… but they certainly would have raked it in given the value they offering users.
totally wrong about this one, schoenfeld. check yer facts. in terms of dollars & cents, nbc (or GE) came out of this quite nicely. techcrunch should be so lucky. poorly researched, poorly argued post
I was able to watch all games for any sport at
nbcolympics.com for the first time EVER. The editing
could have been better (break up 5-hour long videos
into smaller chunks with metadata). Kudos to NBC for
putting all of this online and providing free video streams.
They also had live coverage online for many events.
So, for a sports fan it was great.
Not only that, they had
experts commentary in a chat window beneath the
video for live events — with the expert answering questions
from online viewers.
The TV coverage sucked in comparison. The author of this
article probably didnt spend much time watching the games online
A lot of events were available online, but only hours, hours after the event occurred. I guess they were keeping it on hold until the TV broadcast occurred.
Right or wrong, the feeling at NBC and other broadcasters is “Don’t exchange analog dollars for digital cents” .
Advertisers lined up to pay at least $350K per minute for ads, no way could they get that kind of revenue on line.
“I would have gladly paid $20, maybe $30 or $40 to access all or most of the live events via nbcolympics.com. As a matter of fact, I would prefer to pay a flat fee and have no ads interrupt my viewing experience.” my guess is you’d be one of the very few.
And what’s the difference between Silverlight and Flash, except Silverlight has more features. Flash isn’t exactly open source. If you want to see the coverage, download it, watch, then remove it. You install all kinds of special software all the time. I don’t see complaints about needing iTunes or quiktime.
I agree with @altrenda. This was an opportunity to make money from die-hard fans that would have paid a premium to have content available to them 24/7. I wanted so much to follow the soccer matches, but only watched one match. That’s because I could not figure out when those games would be available. Now I’m learning that NBC set up a FREE HD feed to most cable and satellite providers. How about a a premium online feed? I’d paid money for that option.
What a mistake.
Silverlight, Flash, Quicktime Seemic. . .It did not matter. The availablity of live content was disappointing. Additionally, how to track down results and/or video of specific events was poor. I look at this as a first attempt and hope that NBC and other primary broadcasters of an event on this scale will take away many lessons.
For the first time since the 1980 games have I viewed so little of the coverage of the olympic games, in part because I just could not figure out the scheduling grid online. I relied on this tool to set up my DVR and plan my viewing.