XR Extreme Reach’s Post

From NBC Sports Researcher to Executive Producer of The Olympic Games, Molly Solomon Talks Paris 2024: As Executive Producer & President, NBC Olympics & Paralympics Production, Molly Solomon is responsible for all day-to-day editorial production of NBCUniversal's coverage of the Games. Molly began her career at NBCUniversal as one of two researchers for its Emmy-winning coverage of the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. Following eleven years as executive producer at the Golf Channel, she came full circle to her current role. The Paris Olympics will be Molly’s 14th Olympic Games. Tell us about NBCUniversal’s unique history with the Olympic Games? This summer in Paris marks NBCUniversal's 19th Olympic broadcast. This will be our 10th Summer Olympics and boy, there have been some great ones. This year will continue to build on our company’s 88-year legacy with the games. The first Olympics covered was in 1936 over the radio - it reached 41 countries while our first tv broadcast of the Games had just 14 hours of coverage.  This year, we will present more than 7,000 hours of content. So, we’ve come a long way. What is it about the Paris 2024 Games that is garnering so much excitement? I think after two COVID impacted Olympics, we haven't had an Summer Games in their full glory with full stadiums, friends and families in attendance since 2016. I think the world's ready for what we call a full-throated Olympics in Paris. And when you think about the Summer Olympics, is there any city better than Paris? Paris is inspirational, aspirational. They're going to use the historic landmarks of the city as venues. You combine all of that with the romanticism, the artistry, the flair of Paris. What an amazing backdrop for an Olympics. As viewing habits have changed, how are we meeting audiences wherever they are with the Olympics? The breadth of the Olympics requires that we use the expansiveness of NBCUniversal’s portfolio to showcase the Games. Audiences will be able to watch on NBC everyday with at least nine hours of live daytime coverage and at night with with our re-imagined Primetime in Paris – which will deliver in-depth storytelling every single night. You may know what happened, but we'll tell you why it happened. Peacock will be the U.S. streaming home of the 2024 Paris Olympics, providing fans with the most-comprehensive Olympic destination in U.S. media history. In a Summer Games first, the service will stream every sport and event, including all 329 medal events. Our cable networks like USA Network, E!, CNBC, GOLF Channel, and two specialty channels will present live action and programming throughout the Olympics as well. Marking 20 years of Olympic coverage on Telemundo, the network will present the most extensive Olympic coverage in Spanish-language media history with more programming hours than ever before across Telemundo, Universo and Peacock. Fans can head to the theatre…

With record audiences for the #FIFAWWC and the inclusion of female athletes in EA Sports FC - its been a truly monumental year for women in sports and gaming 🌟 Our recent article on The Drum explores what this means for advertisers looking to engage diverse international audiences 🎮 Learn More 👇 https://lnkd.in/ebHh458D #GetInTheGame | #InGameAdvertising | #Gaming

A fascinating report as ever from Tammy Parlour MBE and team. Several bits stand out for me that are important for those of us banging the drum for more investment & exposure for women in sport. 💥 The growth of football, creates an unintentional false narrative here about how well women’s sport overall is doing at attracting investment & visibility. Hear me out. Football is unsurprisingly the dominant sport of interest in the UK and this report shows that. Of all women’s sport, it was the most popular sport for viewers/fans in 2023, bagging 74% of viewing hours.  I have a theory that when people talk here about the growth of women's sport, they are in fact largely talking about football, whose growth is amazing and impressive, but the rest are fishing in a much much smaller pool. In short, getting investment & increasing visibility for women in sport in the UK is incredibly hard, especially if you’re not football. (Football is still great though, and I love it) 💥When fans have a good experience in one women’s sport, it leads to interest in others. 15.6m people who had not watched women’s sport before, watched the Women’s Football World Cup – some 43% of them then went on to watch other women’s sport including cricket and golf.  Good opportunity here for other sports to leverage the popularity of football to their own ends. 💥Free to air television is VITALLY important for women’s sport. BBC and ITV only accounted for 11% of coverage hours - but that equalled 77% of ALL viewing hours for women’s sport in 2023.  Granted getting an FTA deal worth anything is hard (rugby for eg has in the past pretty much had to pay to get their games shown on FTA TV), but the short-term pain of a poorer deal is probably worth it in the long run to grow a league and or a fanbase. Live women’s rugby domestically for eg is entirely currently behind the TNT paywall making it hard for a new league to grow (would love to be wrong about this though!) 💥Fans attending live women’s sporting events tend to be younger, more female and highly digitally engaged compared to broadcast viewers or versus men’s sport.  This is a great opportunity to engage brands/sponsors who want to reach an audience they might not be able to otherwise reach through a deal with a men’s team/league. 

It's Monday and I'm sharing some GOOD news I've been reading via Aaron Toumazou on LI news, thanks to research by Women's Sport Trust published last week. 😃 46.7 million people in the UK tuned into televised women's sport last year 😃 Average viewing time over the course of 2023 was 10 hours and seventeen minutes, marking a 16% annual increase 😃 TikTok was a major driver of video views. The Barclays Women’s Super League (BWSL) saw a 268% year-on-year increase to 150m views, while the TikTok Women’s Six Nations (now Guinness Women's Six Nations) saw an annual increase in views of 586% on the channel 😃 Viewing figures for women's sport defied those of wider domestic sport consumption on TV, which declined by 5% in 2023. There are some great brands championing women in sport and indeed their tournaments, notably Dove, Gillette and Starling, all of whom I really rate some recent sponsorships and content from this past year. But broadly for now, I just want to see more of this upward trajectory and hope I can work on some projects that play its part in it this year too. On the other side of the coin, Taylor Swift has already increased teenage girls viewing of the NFL by over 50% apparently... Is this good for the cause? Well - the hype gotta' start somewhere. Drive to Survive, in a few weeks anyone?

In 2021, I remeber turning on the tv and saying “When did the Olympics start?!” Fast Forward to 2024, nearly 42 million people regularly tune in to NBC Sports or Peacock, Snoop Dog is watching the events with us, events feel engaging even without your home country’s competitors, and the opening ceremony is still being talked about on X, Instagram, and TikTok. This is more evidence that the entertainment industry’s shift to sports is on the rise and audiences are responding positively. However, there’s a myriad of reasons why these Olympics seem to feel so different. Aside from the return of the fans in 2024, around the clock coverage, Paris’s magical architecture and their close operational involvement, and a strong marketing campaign from NBCUniversal are strong reasons why viewership was up 79% from Tokyo. With overall viewers up, we’re also consuming more of the games, and this was anticipated as this is the first time they’re airing live during the day and recycling at prime time. From the stone arch inspired skating obstacles to the unique cardboard beds, France has made a unique and pointed presentation of their capital showing what it means to be French! The last and I think the most important reason is how the Olympics were marketed. They have been collaborating with every arm of NBCUniversal for more than a year, and I think at one point it was almost nauseating how much I saw the Olympics being advertised. But, this made sure no one had that moment of, “When did the Olympics start?” https://lnkd.in/eA8JgzpE

In the newest NextTV article, Jon Lafayette, Business Editor of Broadcast + Cable, covers the Paris Summer Olympics, which includes coverage, star-studded events, and targeted advertising efforts. In this piece, our very own Teads Global CMO, Natalie Bastian, predicts unprecedented engagement during this year’s Olympics which we can see reflected in Teads contextual-data planning tools. She notes, "The Teads Media Barometer, powered by contextual-intelligence signals, has registered an uptick in interest in the Olympics over the last eight to 10 months." She notes that women's sports are experiencing a surge in pageviews, spurred by the Caitlin Clark effect. She adds that "even the controversy surrounding Clark being excluded from Team USA has enhanced the halo effect surrounding women's sports." To underscore the findings, she mentions that within the Media Barometer, Teads found that "8% of total Olympic pageviews are centered around the return of US Gold Medal Gymnast Simone Biles, boosted by a new Netflix documentary." Interestingly, the majority of page views on Biles is skewed towards men and spans all age groups, showing that content is consumed across all audiences. Finally, Natalie predicts that with bold-faced names going for the gold, “whether they’re making a comeback like Simone or doing their closing lap like [men’s basketball star] LeBron [James], we see that these content consumption moments are driving record viewership for the Olympics." Read the full article on NextTV >> https://hubs.li/Q02HvyWR0 #2024Olympics #ParisOlympics #WomensSports #OwntheMoment #ContextualTargeting #Contextual #CookielessSolutions #SportsMarketing #OlympicGames #DataAndInsights #MediaStrategy #OlympicCoverage #SportsFans #MarketingTrends #FemaleAthletes #Biles #Lebron

28.6 million views for the Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony! While opinions on the event varied, one thing is clear: #creators are now co-pilots in Olympic coverage, offering fresh, relatable perspectives to millions. With 78% of US viewers planning to catch the games on social media, and 41% thinking to spend the most time engaging with Olympics content on social media, the shift is evident. 📱 NBC has teamed up with Meta, TikTok, Snapand Youtube to bring 27 top creators to Paris for exclusive, on-the-ground coverage of the 2024 Olympics. The United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee has introduced “Team USA Creators” – a lineup of 12 former Olympians, Paralympians, athletes, and content creators who will broadcast live from Paris. Why this matters: 🎤 These partnerships with creators and sports legends respond to the evolving media habits of Gen Z. 🎤By including creators in the coverage, they’re delivering more genuine and relatable storytelling. 🎤Creators will showcase not only the sports events but also the rich culture and social vibe of the Paris Olympics, from local cuisine to iconic Parisian landmarks. 🎤Brands can now create sponsored content that engages their audience in a more natural way. Here are our top picks for Olympic coverage: 📱 Chris Matthews (“Lethal Shooter” on Instagram) 📱 Molly Carlson (on TikTok) 📱 Duke Dennis (on Snapchat). What’s the best video you’ve seen so far? Share your favorites below! 👇🎥

Exciting times for women's sports! 🌟 Here's a snapshot of the remarkable growth in the UK: - Viewership: 46.7 million tuned into women's sports on TV in the last year, a new record! - Viewing Time: Fans watched an average of 10 hours and 17 minutes throughout 2023, up 16% from the previous year. - Football Fever: Dominated 74% of viewing hours, with the Women's World Cup final drawing 12 million viewers. - Live Events: Attendance at women's sports events rose to 2.6 million, up from 2.1 million. - Social Surge: TikTok boosted the Barclays Women’s Super League views by 268% to 150m, and the Women's Six Nations views by 586%. - Against the Trend: These gains contrast with a 5% decline in overall domestic sports TV consumption. Kudos to the athletes, supporters, and all who contribute to elevating the visibility and excitement of women's sports to unprecedented levels! 😊 #womenssports #growth #engagement

With the Euros coming to a close the focus is shifting in the Media & Entertainment world to the Paris 2024 Olympics! 🇫🇷 🏃 ✍️ Warner Bros. Discovery has recently adopted an interesting approach to covering the games. Yesterday it was announced that they would be partnering with YouTube. This is to include daily highlight reels in multiple languages with Popular YouTube creators capturing the Olympics from exclusive angles including Live streams of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies. 👻 This comes just 12 days after they announced a two-year, multi-region partnership with Snap Inc. featuring a dedicated Olympics show with daily highlights and behind-the-scenes content, "Beyond the Olympics" - a weekly localized sports show showcasing the best from WBD (tennis, football, combat sports) and the Launch of TNT Sports on Snapchat UK, with highlights of major UEFA competitions and European leagues. ✨This innovative approach caters to a wider audience of sports fans through engaging content hosted by creators with diverse voices that make sports coverage more accessible. 📊 This comes after Snapchat released research that shows a surge in young adults' interest in sports with 65% of 18-24-year-olds’ interest in sports having increased, and almost half (47%) believing the world of traditional sports fandom is inaccessible to them. More Information Below and in the comments ⬇️ #Paris2024 #OlympicsOnYouTube #OlympicsOnSnapchat

As sports entertainment is evolving, there are so many opportunities for interesting innovations to engage new audiences and immerse brands organically within sub-cultures. I am really excited to see how innovations like Athlos can create new opportunities to reimagine how people engage, watch and participate in sport. https://lnkd.in/g4pYUZc7