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• Transcript

  James Kotecki (00:00): 

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  (00:35): 

  Go to Ces.tech/exhibitor. That's Ces.tech/exhibitor. This is CES Tech Talk. I'm James Kotecki, exploring the trends shaping the world's most powerful tech event. CES 2025 comes back to Las Vegas, January 7th through 10th. Today we are all about content and advertising at the Olympics of content and advertising, which is of course the Olympics. Dan Lovinger is the president for Olympic and Paralympic partnerships at NBC Universal. In other words, he's the one fueling the engine of athletic entertainment as NBC broadcasts the 2024 summer games from Paris, he joins us now to unpack the storytelling innovation that will take the viewing and advertising experience to the next level. Dan, welcome to CES Tech Talk. 

  Dan Lovinger (01:40): 

  Well, thank you for having me. It's great to be here. 

  James Kotecki (01:43): 

  So I spoke to one of your colleagues a few months ago at CES 2024, Mark Marshall, who was the chairman of global advertising and partnerships at NBC Universal. And, at the time, he said the Olympics in Paris is going to be the biggest streaming events ever, so I would love you to just kind of set the stage for us. How do we wrap our minds around the scope of what's going to be happening at the Olympic and Paralympic games? What are we going to be experiencing? 

  Dan Lovinger (02:08): 

  Sure. I think I can look at it in sort of two ways. The first way I'd look at it is just the obvious. Every two years, from winter to summer or summer to winter, we experience an Olympic and Paralympic games, and they always break through the cultural zeitgeist. They're bringing families together, communities together, and celebrating the world's greatest sports achievements. It offers a truly unique and powerful medium for advertisers to break through, and importantly for viewers to gather together almost in a once every two years way. Maybe the Super Bowl offers a similar sort of opportunity for people to watch, consume, enjoy, and talk about things in sort of a cultural way like this. So the 2024 Paris games will be, importantly, the first games post-COVID, and when you think about having fans back in the stands, that's only going to add to the heightened excitement for what will be the biggest event of the year. 

  (03:18): 

  There's no doubt about it and, frankly, the biggest event of the decade to date. When you think about some of the, and I'm sure we'll talk about some of the new innovation that we're bringing to these games, reinventing and re-envisioning how we present these games. We have a lot of excitement in store. So that's the first way I would look at it. Then, the other thing I would say is that, overall, these games are shaping up to be the biggest ones we've ever seen, across both linear and now digital and streaming, largely because of the way the games have been anticipated, the city that we're going to talk about, I'm sure, and the fact that Peacock has reached this critical scale, it allows viewers from all angles to enjoy these games in a way that they haven't in the past. That makes us really, really excited, because we see a lot of viewer intent in a good place. 

  James Kotecki (04:20): 

  A lot to unpack there, and you left a lot of great breadcrumbs for us to cover throughout the rest of this conversation. Let's talk about just the number of different places that people can click a button and watch some kind of Olympic or Paralympic activity happening. You mentioned Peacock, obviously. You're on multiple channels on traditional linear television. Give us the full menu. 

  Dan Lovinger (04:43): 

  Sure. And it's important too, that we've done some work simplifying the opportunity to view. Coming out of the Beijing games, we actually did a consumer engagement study, hired a third party to work with us to make sure we understood what viewers liked and what viewers needed changes with. One of the sort of common threads we heard from viewers of all ages was, The Olympics are awesome, but we almost need them to be easier to consume. Typically, we will bring the games to viewers through our broadcast network, NBC, through multiple cable networks, through digital platforms like Peacock, and then through social partnerships. 

  (05:32): 

  That's all great. It allows us to customize the content in ways that viewers of all types want to see it and enjoy it, but it can also be overwhelming. So what we've done is we've actually really refined how we're marketing and promoting the games and driving viewership. First and foremost, to sort of the mothership NBC and to Peacock for streamers, and then to Telemundo for Spanish language speakers. Then, from there, the viewer will be given optionality to enjoy other means of consumption, but it's really those three primary platforms that lead the way, our promotion heads there, and then perhaps we'll talk some more about Peacock and sort of the changes to how Peacock will be bringing the games to viewers. 

  James Kotecki (06:19): 

  Well, let's talk about that streaming experience. You've got, I suppose, in theory, the ability to show any sport, any athlete, from any angle, but talk to me about choices that are made in terms of what you're putting on streaming. So I guess another way of framing this question is, in the past, linear television, at any given point, you can only be showing one camera angle, maybe a couple if you're really fancy. Now you theoretically have infinite possibilities in terms of what you can be showing, and theoretically, I suppose, infinite bandwidth and capacity to put it out there. Obviously, you just mentioned you want to simplify it and not overwhelm people, so where do you land on that? 

  Dan Lovinger (06:58): 

  Peacocks can be the streaming home of the Paris games. No surprise, I'm sure, to you or any of our listeners. We want to provide fans with what will be the most comprehensive Olympic destination ever. This will be our first summer games where we've had everything available on Peacock, because you may remember we kind of launched Peacock during the Tokyo games, but we weren't able to bring all of our content to Peacock at that point. We had some work to do, clearances, and things like that. So these summer games will be the first where you'll get the full experience on Peacock with over 5,000 hours of live coverage of all sports. In addition, you'll have Simulcasts of the NBC broadcasts, our cable broadcasts. So everything that is available on our linear channels, you can SimulStream on Peacock, you'll have full event replays available. You'll have shorter clips. You'll have original series. 

  (08:03): 

  There's all sorts of things available there. Plus, Peacock streams, several Olympic sports throughout the year, including track and field, gymnastics, figure skating, skiing, snowboarding. So our Peacock viewers are becoming familiar with Olympic Sports before we even get to the games, which is important, almost as a promotional vehicle. Then, you think about every single event for the Paralympics also will be available on Peacock, which is fantastic because that's a first time, and now the exposure for these incredibly courageous and awesome athletes will be bigger and better than ever. So there's a lot of content there, but I think what's also interesting is we're experimenting with new ad formats. We're launching something called Virtual Concessions, which is going to enable audiences to purchase food and beverages while they're getting ready to settle in. Perhaps the first weekend of the games, after the first week, we'll have 47 gold medals in 48 hours, Gold Rush Weekend. There's no better way to sit and enjoy 47 gold medals than with access to food and beverage brought to you through your favorite delivery service. 

  James Kotecki (09:25): 

  So I'm in the streaming experience, and there's a button or something that pops up that allows me to get one of the delivery service brands to bring me my pizza, my drinks, or whatever I'm looking for? 

  Dan Lovinger (09:35): 

  Yeah, totally possible. We're going to launch that each day during our daytime coverage, sort of at the height of, if you think about during daytime, we're going to have live events because Paris is plus six from the east coast, plus nine from the west coast, so we'll have Mike Tirico actually come on midway through our daytime coverage and sort of signal to the viewer that stuff's about to get real. This is going to be the beginning of the big event. Yes, there'll be a QR code, and you'll be able to scan and go straight to whatever delivery service that we end up bringing to the screen. 

  (10:13): 

  So yeah, it's really exciting. It's the type of innovation that we can bring to these Olympics that we haven't had in the past. We revealed the new Peacock Olympic user interface at our 124 event a couple of months ago, and it's slick. It's elegant. It's really intuitive. It allows the user to find the sport they want quickly. They'll be able to watch basically any sport they want, either live or they can tape it or pin it, so to speak. Tape is an old term. Pin it and put it in my stuff folder. It'll be delivered to their folder. They'll be able to watch it whenever they want, so there's no end of possibility, as you were saying earlier, to the consumption options. 

  James Kotecki (11:00): 

  And that brings it back to something that you mentioned just a bit ago, which is the idea of viewer familiarity and viewers increasingly becoming familiar with the options that are available to them through streaming, the way that streaming works. Do you feel like there's any additional, and it sounds like the new interface is quite intuitive for folks, but is there any additional "training" that you need to do of the consumer, of the viewer to let them know it's simpler, it's easier, but this is kind of how it works now? 

  Dan Lovinger (11:28): 

  I don't think so. I think we're really counting on the fact that a lot of our viewers are pretty savvy streaming consumers already. Based on sort of the way we've introduced the product, and as I mentioned at 124, we showed it off, we really do think that anybody, from the most, I guess, adept, Gen, Z or to my mom will really feel comfortable working with Peacock. I think there's some incredibly useful features for, again, viewers of all ages. We've got a feature called multi-view, where you'll be able to watch four different events going on, and- 

  James Kotecki (12:07): 

  Yes. 

  Dan Lovinger (12:08): 

  ... And you'll be able to then telescope into the event of your choice, so it gives you an opportunity to sort of sample different properties within the Olympics at once. 

  James Kotecki (12:18): 

  It kind of turns us into producers, like show producers, show editors, or directors. We got all these cameras, and we can zoom in on what we think is interesting. 

  Dan Lovinger (12:26): 

  And the other thing, you were mentioning it earlier, James, with sort of the evolution of how we bring these games to people, because Peacock has this not unlimited shelf space, but you're able to offer that kind of a lean-in opportunity, but also if somebody just wants to lean back and watch a simul stream, which is frankly where the majority of viewers will be, historically have and will probably be, that's fine too. It doesn't have to be any more difficult than turning on your streaming device and watching. 

  James Kotecki (12:57): 

  You mentioned that folks can go onto Peacock and watch the NBC coverage. Is the NBC brand within that ecosystem kind of like the flagship, like if you're just going to turn it on and kind of casually watch, here's a curation of what we think is the most interesting thing going on right now, and that's the NBC channel within that ecosystem? 

  Dan Lovinger (13:18): 

  Yeah. I think our hallmark with the Olympics has always been the way we story-tell, and quite honestly, we got away from that during the last two games. I call them the COVID games of Tokyo and Beijing, not because we didn't want to tell the stories, but we literally couldn't get to the places. We couldn't get into the countries, deep into the cultures of the countries. We couldn't spend time with the athletes, so NBC is, I think, really adept and known for our ability to get people vested in the athletes before we even see them perform, and you'll see that on NBC. You'll continue to see that. I think, again, that six-hour time difference between Paris and the East Coast allows us to take an event that's already happened during the day and re-present it on NBC. And again, you can simul-stream it on Peacock, but it allows us to tell the stories of these athletes and the city of Paris becoming a main character once again in a way that people have come to expect it and enjoy it out of NBC. 

  James Kotecki (14:28): 

  I would love to know a little bit more about that storytelling process and that story planning process because you do have all these amazing, I'm not sure if they're still called human interest stories, that you see the kind of narratives and the backgrounds of the athletes, and you get invested in them, but you also have to do this in the context of real-time, real-world events that are changing all the time. Some people might get injured, some people might win, who you didn't expect and that you weren't focused on, and now the story changes. So it's this constantly evolving, real-time story combined with this, I assume you've been planning it for a long time, these different narratives of athletes and other stories that you want to follow, so how do those two things come together? How do you think about that balance? 

  Dan Lovinger (15:07): 

  Well, it's exactly, I mean, the way you're describing, and I'll give you a couple of examples. My favorite one ever is, and I'm going to take us back to the 2016 Rio Games. NBC's Olympic research team is, I think, unsurpassed, and we've got people that have been part of the Olympic movement, working at NBC for 20 games. I mean, massive- 

  James Kotecki (15:32): 

  Wow. 

  Dan Lovinger (15:33): 

  ... Massive dedication and commitment to the Olympic movement. And so, if we go back to the 2016 Rio games, Michael Phelps swimming the 200 fly, it's the finals, and his arch nemesis is an Australian swimmer named Chad le Clos, and Chad, we knew that Phelps and Chad, it was going to be a showdown, and Phelps might not win. And so, what we did was, in the warm-up room behind where they come onto the pool deck, they're sitting in the pool. We had a camera back there, and we literally see Michael with his hoodie up. He's got his earphones on. He's locked in. He's not willing to recognize anyone or anything, other than whatever he's visualizing. Then, you see this Australian swimmer, le Clos, and he's dancing and shadow-boxing, almost like he's a prize fighter, literally like he's a prize fighter before going into the ring. He's doing it in front of Michael, in front of Phelps, and Phelps is just looking, staring straight through the guy. He's not acknowledging it at all. And so, we get to the pool deck, and of course our Rowdy and Dan Hicks, they're playing this up. 

  (16:53): 

  They're like, "Can you believe this guy?" and "Look at Phelps. He's locked in," and so we get to the race and Phelps beats him, literally, by a nanosecond. All he does is he raises the number one finger and he points it at le Clos. I mean, that's a story that we're telling before the race, during the race, and certainly right after the race, so you can plan that, but it's not by accident. It requires a lot of thorough research. It requires commitment, cameras in the right places. So you do that, and those become those winning moments for NBC and our coverage, but then, to your point, you've got other stories that are emerging as we get through the games. What that comes down to is, again, a level of experience with these games in our production and direction chairs. And certainly, when you think about guys like Mike Tirico and all of our analysts who have done so many of these Olympics, they know how to pivot and they know how to find the right stories and, frankly, find them with the right tone, because not every story is a great story. 

  (18:04): 

  We're going to tell all of the stories the way that they need to be told, so I think it's a combination of that pre-prepared, incredibly well-done story, and then the on-the-fly. Then, the last thing I will tell you is we do, every year, or pre-every games, we used to call it the WeHo shoot, the West Hollywood shoot, where we would bring 100 or so athletes to a studio in West Hollywood, and we would shoot some B-roll footage. We'd shoot some interesting content with them that we would intersperse with our coverage, and you'd find it in our daily coverage during the games. We've taken that up a huge notch this time around. We brought the WeHo shoot to the Universal lot. We brought State-of-the-art technology, so we were able to superimpose our athletes into Parisian landmark sites and also do a bunch of really cool, 360-degree visualization. You'll see a lot of that. You've already seen some of it in some of our promotion of the games, but you'll see a lot of that content show up in the games as well. 

  James Kotecki (19:11): 

  And are the athletes, for lack of a better term, game to do this in all cases? Do you have to work with a variety of different personalities? I mean, someone who gets into this because they're really good at a certain sport may or may not be media savvy, good on camera, they might not even like it, and we see that in professional sports all the time with certain athletes. So how do you balance all those things? 

  Dan Lovinger (19:32): 

  So it's fair to say that these athletes are all human beings, and some of them, to your point, are very comfortable in front of the camera. Some of them are not. Some of them want camera time, some of them don't. Again, through the course of the learning, and some of these are repeat athletes from games to games, we get to sort of understand the ones that want to be there and the ones that don't. Quite honestly, some of the most important athletes, in terms of likely to medal, have medaled, or have really interesting backstories, they might not want to do it. 

  (20:11): 

  We have to manage that and work with them, because ultimately their number one goal is to perform to their best ability when the games come, so it's a balancing act. The one thing I will tell you too is, with social media, what we've been able to do is launch a program called Fortius, where we're able to work with athletes to help them build their own profile. We're giving them the tools, because many of them just don't know how. The younger, more tech-savvy athletes, and most of them are fairly young, by the way, are pretty savvy. Some of them just don't understand it, and they don't understand the implications. So Jenny Storms, who is our chief marketing officer at NBC Sports and Entertainment, and Lyndsay Signor, have built this wonderful program that gives the athletes the tools. 

  James Kotecki (21:03): 

  And Fortius, is that a brand name of something that is within NBC Universal? Is that another company that you're partnering with? 

  Dan Lovinger (21:10): 

  No. It's a play on the Olympic motto, Citius-Altius-Fortius, Higher-Faster-Stronger. 

  James Kotecki (21:17): 

  Okay. So that's just the name of the NBC Universal program to help them- 

  Dan Lovinger (21:23): 

  Correct. 

  James Kotecki (21:23): 

  ... Improve their social media. 

  Dan Lovinger (21:24): 

  Correct. Yeah. 

  James Kotecki (21:26): 

  Do you ever run into trouble spots with athletes who have large social media followings, but are telling stories that are potentially countervailing to the interest of NBC? 

  Dan Lovinger (21:39): 

  You know, it's honestly rare. I mean, the athletes, if they're telling a story about their life that has nothing to do with the Olympics, we're going to let them do what they do. If they're telling a story about the Olympics, and we think that they're either misguided or could use some substantiation to telling that story, we'll help them, but I can't think of a time when we've said, "Hey, don't do that." That's certainly not our right to stifle an athlete's voice, and we wouldn't do that. 

  James Kotecki (22:14): 

  It seems like one of the themes that I'm picking up from this conversation is the way that you sell the opportunity here to advertisers is, in part, built on experience and trust that the advertisers have in you that, amidst this potentially chaotic, multifaceted, always evolving storytelling environment, you can't predict exactly what the stories will be. You have a range of ideas. You can't predict exactly what the outcomes will be. You can have some probabilities, but that the advertisers can just trust that there's this general product within a range of possibilities that they can trust you to deliver. Is that a fair way of describing how you sell the opportunity to brand partners? 

  Dan Lovinger (22:54): 

  Yes, and I think we start from a place where there's no other place in media to reach a scaled audience in such an incredibly uplifting environment for a brand that is a truism, regardless of whether you're a first time advertiser, repeat advertiser, a small spender, or a large spender. So we go there first with people, and we prove it with numbers and research. I think where we're starting to really evolve the story though is a bit of a democratization of accessibility for advertisers, and that all comes from the way the games are being consumed more through digital. In the Tokyo games, the most recent summer games, we probably had about 8% of our total consumption coming from digital. 

  (23:50): 

  That will more than double. It'll probably be closer. Somewhere between 20 and 25% of total consumption will be digitally consumed, which by the way, when you think about the way media is being consumed today, it still leaves room for growth. But what it does importantly is, because it's such a massive experience, the Olympics, it gives us real scale digitally and the ability to create new advertising opportunities for sort of the mid and longer tail of advertisers that in the past couldn't afford it. A unit cost on our linear channels would just eat up an entire year's budget for some advertisers, but now we can do that, and we will launch during the games our first ever PMP. 

  (24:38): 

  So we'll be making inventory available programmatically for advertisers to, it'll be biddable and they'll have to hit a price to get in, but it's a whole new way of bringing the games to advertisers. On top of that, we can bring data in using NBC Universal ID. We've launched sort of a cohort already. We call it the Olympic Lever Cohort, where you can reach fans of the Olympics both before and after the games, and you can layer on top of that other rich consumer data. So something like heavy users of fast food that love the Olympics, and you could imagine who might be interested in that. And again, using our targeting tools and one platform, now we're able to do that. 

  James Kotecki (25:28): 

  And I assume you can get to some hyper targeted, niche audiences. I mean, you mentioned- 

  Dan Lovinger (25:34): 

  You can, yeah. 

  James Kotecki (25:35): 

  The scope of this, I'm thinking if someone cares about men's rowing, which is a sport that I'm going to be enjoying this summer, you can get really narrow on the kinds of things that you might want to be selling to them, and again, as you mentioned, maybe smaller brands can play there, because now it's a niche, relatively niche streaming play, a relatively niche audience, but that's exactly who they wanted to reach. 

  Dan Lovinger (25:54): 

  Yeah, and it's ironic too, because the Olympics at its best is this communal viewing experience. It's the one, or maybe two or three, opportunities all year to reach consumers at scale. The rest of the media ecosystem is trying to re-aggregate fragmented audiences to create this environment where you can reach a ton of people all at once in a consistent environment, yet we're also creating this opportunity if you want to go the other way and you want to really create a niche cohort, you can do that. I think, like any other targeting tool though, the more narrow you get, the harder it is to create critical scale, even if it is a niche audience, and you just to manage that, and we can with NBC's tools. 

  James Kotecki (26:46): 

  I want to ask you two more questions. The first question is going to take us on an interesting brief tangent, and then we'll bring it back to the Olympics at the end. The first of these two is there's another major media event in 2024, and that's, of course, the United States election. Now, in some sense, these may feel completely different, right? You've got an uplifting event. You've got an event in the election that's going to stress a lot of people out, one way or another, but that's the other big one. So does that part of the NBC side of the house talk to you? Do you talk to them? Do you learn things from each other and share some kind of learnings there, as far as how advertisers play in that environment? 

  Dan Lovinger (27:32): 

  I mean, we're really, really careful with the Olympics, and I've said this before, the Olympics aren't red or blue. They're red, white, and blue, right? The story has to be about Team USA, and one of the few things our country can all agree on is that we all want to see Team USA do fantastically well. We always try and be very careful not to bring politics into how we sell the games and, frankly, how we cover the games. Having said that, we are going to be packaged on either side of the games by the Republican and the Democratic national Conventions. There's no secret that our country is at an interesting time in terms of the partisan nature of the divide, and I think the Olympics become that common healing moment. 

  James Kotecki (28:27): 

  I know you've been working on the Olympic and Paralympic games for a number of years. How many of these have you covered, have you been involved in? 

  Dan Lovinger (28:34): 

  I've been to every Olympics since the London 2012 games, and I feel really, really fortunate, but in my role as being the person overseeing our Olympic sales, this will be my fourth. I started with Pyeongchang. I had Pyeongchang, followed by Tokyo, followed by Beijing, and now these will be my fourth games. 

  James Kotecki (28:57): 

  So just as, I think, it's safe to say an Olympic fan, and then as someone who's working really closely with the games, the athletes, and the partners here, any favorite moment that you want to close us out with, any Olympic moment that stands out in your history with it? 

  Dan Lovinger (29:11): 

  I've been really, really lucky in my media career to be present in a lot of incredible and fun events; not all of them sports, by the way, but with my time at NBC Sports, I've been involved in our sports group since 2016. The single greatest event I've ever been to was the 2012 100-meter final. It was Usain Bolt's first gold, and it was in the evening in London. We walked in. We had great seats. My wife was with me, and she was thrilled, because we were actually about 10 rows ahead of the Royal box, and she's a huge fan of the Royals, so she was happy. 

  (29:54): 

  The race is about to go off, and all of a sudden, in walks the USA men's basketball team, and it's Kobe, LeBron, James Harding, Kevin Durant, and others, and there's a buzz. You've got this fastest man in the world about to be determined, and all of a sudden, these guys, and they had better seats than us, they take their phones out, and I'm not sure that's legal, but they're taping this race. To me, that's game respecting game. That's world-class athlete, respecting world-class athlete, and there was just something about it for me. It was like, "Wow, this is it. This is the big time. This is as big as it gets in sport," and of course, the race was electric in Bolt one, and that was the beginning of his three-gold medal run. 

  James Kotecki (30:50): 

  Well, Dan Lovinger, president Olympic and Paralympic partnerships at NBC Universal, we really appreciate your time today. I got chills hearing that story, and I hope that everybody- 

  Dan Lovinger (30:59): 

  Aw. That's great. 

  James Kotecki (31:00): 

  ... Watches the games, and I wish you all the best for all the work that you have done, but all the work that I know that you and your team is going to continue to do to bring the games to us this summer. 

  Dan Lovinger (31:11): 

  It's totally my pleasure. Thank you for having me. I think we're in really great shape. These games will be beautiful. They'll be iconic, and they'll be successful. We're facing in a place we want to pace in. We expect to be the most successful games ever from a revenue and a viewership perspective, so thank you very much. 

  James Kotecki (31:32): 

  Best games ever. You heard it here, folks. Well, that's our show for now, but there's always more tech to talk about. So if you're joining us on YouTube, please subscribe, leave a comment. If you're listening on Spotify Apple Podcasts, iHeartMedia, wherever you get your podcasts, so you can hit that follow button. We'd really appreciate it. Let's give those algorithms what they want. You can get even more CES and prepare for Las Vegas at CES.Tech. That's C-E-S.T-E-C-H. Our show is produced by Nicole Vidovich and Mason Manuel, recorded by Andrew Lin and edited by Third Spoon. I'm James Kotecki, talking tech on CES Tech Talk.