Dan Lovinger: Last News

NBCUniversal still considers the Olympic Games to be “the great aggregator of viewership,” in the words of top exec Dan Lovinger, and sees 2024 revenue for Paris on pace to exceed the tally of the 2020 Tokyo Games.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Most contests in the 2024 Summer Olympics set for Paris, France, won’t start until next summer. NBC has been running one race for months.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorA new NBCUniversal advertising executive is taking on the task of tackling advertisers to link themselves to such sports properties as “Sunday Night Football” and the soon-to-launch USFL.Peter Lazarus will take the lead on selling ads behind the bulk of NBCUniversal’s sports programming, part of a gradual overhaul of the company’s work behind connecting Madison Avenue with some of TV’s biggest and most-watched properties.Lazarus has been named executive vice president of sports ad-sales, taking up responsibilities previously held by Dan Lovinger, a longtime NBCU ad-sales exec who has been assigned to focus more intently on the company’s efforts behind Olympics advertising. Lovinger was elevated to president in January and will lead Olympics ad-sales efforts as NBCU works harder to fulfill a commitment it has made along the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, pledging to offer long-term deals to partners for TV, digital, and live event advertising, as well as brand activations and associations with Team USA.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorPaul Wilson never ran a 10,000 meter race at the Olympics, but he sure must feel like it.Wilson has supervised much of the work that NBCUniversal’s ad-sales team has had to do over the past two decade to make the company’s investment in the Olympics pay off. He is stepping down from his role as senior vice president of Olympics ad sales at NBCU, ending a streak of selling commercial inventory for the past ten editions of the Games, eight as the leader — making him directly responsible for $10 billion in ad revenue.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorDan Lovinger, a veteran ad-sales executive who has helped supervised outreach to advertisers for NBCUniversal venues ranging from prime-time TV shows to “Sunday Night Football” and the Super Bowl, is getting a new assignment.Lovinger will oversee all efforts aimed at getting advertisers to sponsor NBCUniversal’s Olympics and Paralympics broadcasts, a pillar of the company’s programming strategy representing hundreds of hours worth of some of TV’s highest-priced inventory. Lovinger, who had been an executive vice president, has been elevated to president, and will report directly to Linda Yaccarino, NBCU’s global chairman of advertising sales and partnerships.

The Super Bowl is around the corner again, and advertisers are spending big bucks on spots during the game!

All but a handful of ads on next February’s Super Bowl on NBC have been sold, fetching as much as $6.5 million for 30 seconds, according to the latest report from NBCUniversal ad execs.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorMadison Avenue is returning to the Super Bowl — with a vengeance.NBC Sports has fewer than five 30-second slots left to sell in its coming 2022 broadcast of Super Bowl LVI and is seeing some sponsors agree to pay as much as $6.5 million for them, along with a similar investment in other NBC inventory, according to Dan Lovinger, executive vice president of sports ad sales at NBCUniversal. That price is more than was sought initially by NBC, which was working to sell Super Bowl ads for between $5.8 million and $6.2 million earlier this year.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorNBCUniversal may well complete an Olympic-like event before the next set of Games even get started.The massive Comcast media conglomerate is returning to negotiations with Madison Avenue for advertising time in the now-delayed Tokyo Olympics, slated at present to take place this summer, just months after unwinding what had been described as $1.25 billion, or 90% of the inventory previously allocated to the company’s telecast of the event.

By Brian Steinberg