More than a year out, NBCU’s 2024 Olympics ad sales are “pacing well ahead” of last Summer Games

The 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris are more than a year away, but NBCUniversal has a head start—at least when it comes to pitching the game to advertisers.

Ahead of this year’s upfronts, NBCUniversal is already in active discussions with all of the major holding companies about opportunities for the upcoming Summer Games, Dan Lovinger, NBCUniversal’s president, ad sales and partnerships, told reporters on Tuesday.

While it is still very early in the sales process, ad sales are already “pacing well ahead” of where NBCUniversal was at the same point in time ahead of the last Summer Olympics in Tokyo (which were held in 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic), Lovinger said. While exact pricing information wasn’t shared, Lovinger said the Olympics will “continue to lead the pack in terms of pricing premium.”

“We expect continued engagement as the upfront discussions in the months ahead inspire advertisers to take note of one of the most exciting and engaging Olympic opportunities in decades,” Lovinger said.

The halo effect: NBCUniversal released research Tuesday from the brand consultancy Brand Asset Valuator (BAV) to help quantify the effects of advertising during the Olympics. BAV found that Olympic partners, on average, outperformed competitors on brand funnel metrics by 36% across categories, Matthew Gottlieb, VP, sports insights and research, advertising, and partnerships, said.

BAV also found that brands across categories that advertised during the Games saw a 40% lift in both loyalty and pricing power compared to brands that didn’t advertise during the Games, though research methodology was not shared.

Do it live: The Olympics, along with other live sporting events, continue to attract major advertiser investment as one of the few places that can guarantee big audiences in a fractured media environment. NBCUniversal, which has the rights to air the US broadcasts of the Games through 2032, has been selling advertisers Olympics sponsorship opportunities that span multiple Games, meaning that some sponsors locked down their spots in the 2024 Games years ahead of time.