By: Brent Shockley, Principal
The 2024 Summer Olympic games officially begin today and run through Sunday, August 11th. The opening ceremony will feature over 10,000 athletes aboard over 90 boats floating down the Seine River in Paris at 7:30pm local time and 1:30pm Eastern US time. A few sports, such as football (soccer in the US), got an early start to their opening rounds on Wednesday, July 24th.
A study by Oxford University found that nearly every Olympics since 1960 has gone over budget, by an average of 172%. The cost of the 2024 Paris games is expected to be approximately $10 billion, roughly 25% over its original budget. However, this cost is well below recent Olympics.
The difference is largely due to event specific construction. Unlike many host cities, 90% of the venues in the Paris Olympics are pre-existing. The major capital expenditures include $1.6 billion for the Olympic Village, $190 million for the aquatics center, and $150 million for gymnastics and badminton. Los Angeles is utilizing a similar strategy to limit spending, along with private funding, to meet its ambitious budget of $6.8 billion for the 2028 Summer Games.
The 2024 Olympic Games will be broadcast in the U.S. on NBC, its Peacock streaming service, and Telemundo. In 2014, NBC Universal signed an extension with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to broadcast six Olympic games from 2021 through 2032 for $7.75 billion. NBC executives hope the 2024 Olympic games reverse the decline in Peacock subscriptions, despite recent price increases of $20 for annual plans and $2 for monthly plans.
Peacock subscribers increased from 4 million in mid-2021 to 33.5 million during the first quarter of 2024. However, in the second quarter of 2024, Peacock experienced its first quarterly decline losing 500,000 subscribers. Peacock will stream weekly college football games as part of the Big Ten Conference’s new media package this fall. In addition to Big Ten games, six Notre Dame football home games will stream on Peacock simultaneously with the linear NBC national broadcast. Peacock will be the exclusive outlet for Notre Dame’s home game with Louisville on September 28th. The controversial move by the NFL to grant Peacock exclusivity to a playoff game last January (featuring eventual Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs) angered many football (and Taylor Swift) fans but resulted in an average of 23 million viewers, the largest live streaming event in the U.S. Peacock also has the exclusive rights to Green Bay Packers vs. the Philadelphia Eagles in Brazil on Friday, September 6th. With these strategic additions to its streaming lineup, Peacock aims to regain momentum and attract a broader audience in the competitive streaming market.