Paris Hilton, Dolly Parton and Sabrina Carpenter? NBC Makes Celebrities Core of Olympics Strategy

Before NBC went to Paris, NBC went to Paris.

Paris Hilton isn't the first person that comes to mind when it comes to lining up talent to promote a sports property like the 2024 Summer Olympics, held in Paris, France. The multi-hyphenate entrepreneur has been known, over a number of swirling cycles, for reality shows; an attempt at starting a music career; and launching sundry products. But marketing executives at NBCUniversal couldn't resist tapping her for one of the most unusual promotional efforts in the company's history.

In years past, NBCU hasn't started pumping its Olympics telecasts until just a few months before the Opening Ceremonies. When it came to Paris, the media company launched a promo with Hilton in January of 2023 - about a year and a half before Mike Tirico, Kelly Clarkson and Peyton Manning greeted viewerswith a primetime rebroadcast of a floating parade down Paris' Seine in late July.

To get there, NBC had to tear up its old playbook. The company felt pressure after muddling its way through three different sets of Games based in far-eastern time zones - PyeongChang in 2018, Tokyo in 2021 and Beijing in 2022. "Two of them were impacted by Covid," recalls Jenny Storms, NBCU's chief marketing officer for entertainment and sports, in an interview. "It was not the Olympics as we are used to seeing them."

Nor are the Games that have been running in the past two weeks across NBC, some of its cable networks and its Peacock streaming hub. The company has, finally, stopped trying to act as a gatekeeper, and now lets fans watch anything they wish live, as it happens. That meant turning over the daytime schedule of the NBC broadcast network to Olympics and adding an arsenal of interesting new concepts for the streaming crowd, including loose-limbed "watch parties" hosted by freewheeling podcaster Alex Cooperand a new "Gold Zone" whip-around program that lets streamers follow Olympics action from one breakout moment to the next. In addition to familiar sportscaster faces like Mike Tirico's, viewers have gotten used to seeing non-traditional personalities, including Snoop Doggand Colin Jost, the "Weekend Update" co-anchor from "SNL."

The results? NBC is seeing significant increases in viewership over the Tokyo Games, with record usage for Peacock. Over 14 days, NBCU has seen an average of 31.6 million viewers tune in to its afternoon and primetime coverage, up 77% from similar measures from its Tokyo Games. The company says 20.3 billion minutes of Paris Olympics coverage has been streamed through Thursday. Ratings have soared for other crucial NBCU properties, such as "NBC Nightly News" and "Today," giving those programs an opportunity to strike a connection with viewers who might nor ordinarily watch. The company said it expects to book more than $1.25 billion in ad sales, surpassing previous Olympic hauls.

"It feels to me like the Summer Olympics are back in a big way," says Matt Sweeney, chief investment officer for the U.S. operations of GroupM, the large media-buying arm of ad giant WPP. "It felt less important under Covid."

NBC's celebrity chemistry could offer a new formula for big media companies that have been forced to rely more heavily on sports as many of their viewers leave traditional TV for streaming video. Sports broadcasts represent the one programming format that continues to draw the large simultaneous audiences that advertisers crave and cable and satellite distributors need. NFL games and NHL match-ups have built-in fans, but the key to the future for NBC and its rivals will be luring in new viewers - audiences who may not be sports die-hards or local-team stans. To attract broader crowds, the big media companies will have to inject new strains of popular culture into sports events.

Many have already tried to do so. Disney's ESPN has in recent years launched a "Monday Night Football" simulcast featuring Peyton and Eli Manning offering game commentary while hobnobbing with sports and celebrity guests. The sports network has also experimented with its coverage of the NFL Draft, offering one version on its flagship network for football aficionados and a second on Disney's ABC that has in the past relied on "Good Morning America" co-anchor Robin Roberts and country-music stars.

NBCU seems to be letting others test out new ideas in the Olympics as well. GroupM was given permission to buy up an entire commercial break and fill it with ads only from its own clients, including Google, Target and Coca-Cola. It no doubt helped that one of the companies involved was NBCU's own Universal Pictures. Such an idea has been discussed for many years, but typically TV networks prefers to retain control over their own commercial traffic. NBC also ran an hour during its telecast of the Opening Ceremonies that was billed as being "commercial free," but featured logos from six different advertisers on screen during the event.

NBCU may take some of the concepts it hatched in Paris and bring them back to the U.S. Some ideas "we will certainly deploy against not only other sports properties but look at other live events that NBCUniversal has on our calendar," said Mark Lazarus, chairman of NBCUniversal Media Group. " We are a company that's rich in big live events certainly around the holidays, with Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and Christmas at Rockefeller Center," he adds. "Some of these technologies can be deployed against other live events and we'll continue to experiment."

While the Games officially launched July 26, the work to make them more appealing to potential viewers has been in place for the past year. After its Paris Hilton promo, NBCU lined up Dolly Parton to release a video of her performing Queen's "We Are the Champions/We Will Rock You" - one year before the scheduled start of the Paris extravaganza. Since that time, there has been a distinct cadence of surprise promos backed by NBC and featuring everyone from Peyton Manning to Megan Thee Stallion to, most recently, Sabrina Carpenter - an appearance that coincided with the widening halo around her hit song "Espresso."

Wrangling Carpenter to take part in recent days was, Storms concedes, "last minute."

The strategy, however, was not. NBC surveyed consumers as much as two years ago to find out what would spark conversation, Storms says, and one in three said that they responded to celebrities. So rather than stick with Olympics marketing go-tos - majestic music and inspiring athletes - NBC has tried pop culture, with promotional pieces that utilized SZA or Lilly Collins. "It was a swing on our part, something we haven't done," Storms says.

Now that the effort has gained traction, more may be on the way. We are going to see a long off-ramp from the Olympics," Storms says. Olympian storylines could prove relevant throughout the fall. When 2025 hits, she says, "we will quickly move to Milano Cortina," site of the 2026 Winter Olympics. "We will really start to amp up that campaign and messaging." As for what celebrities may be in talks for future Olympics work? "Our doors are open," says Storms.