Comcast is still crunching numbers on the Summer Olympics in Paris but Chief Financial Officer Jason Armstrong said today “it was a big moment for the company” and “quite frankly, it was one that was not without risk.”
“We’ve had three Olympics in a row that, between time zone and pandemic, had underperformed our expectations, no fault of our own, just, you know, things that were out of our control. And so that had the Olympics on shakier footing, if you will, headed into Paris. And so we had a whole company effort to lean into this and make it spectacular, to get it back on the right footing, and to set up Milan, LA and then whatever comes after that. The next couple are sort of locked in and should be great as well, but they will be even more great if Paris was really, really good and [we] sort of set the right tone for that,” he told investors at a media conference.
The 2024 summer games ran from July 29 through August 11 and averaged 30.6 million viewers across all NBCU platforms for the Paris Prime daytime telecast (2-5 p.m. ET) and nightly primetime shows (8-11 pm ET/PT), up 82% from the Tokyo Olympics.
“We’ve delivered for our advertising clients. If you look at where ratings were relative to expectations, I think you know that if you advertised with us, that was a very good thing. I think it delivered for streaming as an acquisition tool, then the amount of engagement that we saw, and the quality of the platform,” Armstrong said. Comcast, the cable business and Xfinity all used the games as a promotional marketing too,l driving traffic and boosting ratings as the company made it easier for viewers to find the events they wanted.
As for Peacock, he said “it’s always a test when you throw that sort of volume onto a streaming platform. Can it handle the load and can it do it effectively? Can you come up with innovative things? I think we clearly checked the box.”
