NBCU Olympics Ad-Sales Chief Dan Lovinger to Exit in Restructuring

variety.com:

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Dan Lovinger, who supervised an increasingly complex Olympics ad-sales effort for NBCUniversal and delivered what is believed to be a record level of Madison Avenue sponsorship for the recent Paris Olympics, is leaving the company as it seeks to revamp its efforts to lure advertisers to sports.

NBCU in 2022 assigned Lovinger to a new role overseeing all efforts to sell ads for the Olympics and Paralympics, separating him from the rest of the company’s sports sales.

With NBC’s recent pact to secure NBA rights, however, the company sees sports as a significantly bigger driver of its business, and wants to have Olympics deals and other sports sponsorships sold in tandem in a bid to sell bigger packages.

In a memo sent to staffers Monday, Allison Levin, a president of NBCU ad-sales who supervises sales of national, local and sports media, said that sports and Olympics would be sold together, a bid to “leverage a unified strategy across all sports assets to maximize revenue from our properties.” The team will be led by Peter Lazarus, who heads up NBCU’s general sports sales and who was named to the role in 2022.