No joke: more Olympics exposure
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The chaotic climax five years ago of a lengthy management crisis turned the U.S. Olympic Committee into a public laughingstock, in both the media and U.S. Senate hearings.
The joke from that era was on the USOC again this week, when NBC announced it had purchased an interest in World Championship Sports Network, the Olympic sports channel Claude Ruibal created thanks to both his own initiative and the USOC’s inattention.
While USOC officials were busy making utter fools of themselves, leading to a revolving door at the top (three presidents and four CEOs from 2000-2003), Ruibal began quietly purchasing U.S. rights for TV and online use from international sports federations that all but gave the content away in return for exposure in the U.S.
‘Because the USOC in the late 1990s and early 2000s was experiencing instability at the government and management level, it was next to impossible for anyone to summon up the will and collectivism to pursue ambitious ideas like this,’ USOC spokesman Darryl Seibel said, gracefully applying euphemisms to explain how the USOC screwed up.
The USOC achieved stability in 2004. Now that it is trying to create a TV network of its own, likely operational before the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, the USOC would love to have those rights, nearly all of which Ruibal tied up in long-term deals.
The USOC has similar arrangements with most of its national sports federations, the notable exceptions being figure skating, swimming, gymnastics, and track and field, but the three summer sports are expected to cut a USOC rights deal in the near future.
A good thing for the USOC is Ruibal has a genuine interest, beyond making money, in promoting Olympic sports in this country. He sees the result under his own Santa Monica roof: daughter Stefania, 11, insisted on taking up fencing after watching it on a WCSN.com webcast, and she now is the 25th-ranked epee fencer nationally in the 12 & Under division.
‘That is the heart of why we think this is so good,’ Seibel says.
Another good thing, at least for the next four years, is the linkup -– called Universal Sports -- between WCSN and NBC, which has U.S. broadcast rights for the Olympics through 2012.
NBC can use the content WCSN provides on a variety of platforms, including the Internet and its new high-def channel, Universal HD, which needed more sports programming. That is a low-cost way for NBC to keep Olympic interest at least simmering in the months between NBC’s telecasts of the Games.
What happens to all the exposure if NBC does not pony up for Olympic Games rights after 2012 is more problematic, and Seibel declines to comment about it.
The irony in all this is that WCSN became the reincarnation of an NBC idea that was ahead of its time, the late and unlamented Triplecast from the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. NBC mistakenly thought back then that people would ante up from $95 to $170 to see live televised footage of both events it would show on delay or minor sports it would not show at all.
The development of high-speed Internet access since allowed WCSN to deliver similar -- although non-Olympic Games -– live content for a pittance: $4.95 a month or $49.95 a year. WCSN became the U.S. home for world championships and other major events in sports like track, swimming, cycling, rowing, triathlon and skiing, attracting audiences that have a high percentage of people with interest in lifestyle sports and the means to buy stuff advertised on such broadcasts.
Ruibal says he sold his house to get seed money for WCSN and insists, ‘I didn’t get rich at all,’ from the deal with NBC. ‘I’m still trying to make this work,’ he says.
It will work a lot better with NBC leveraging its clout to sell a WCSN-based Universal Sports channel to cable and satellite providers. WCSN’s own fledgling channel reaches just two million homes, mainly in Detroit, Reno and Buffalo.
Universal Sports will be up and running Thursday, with live coverage of early stages of the Olympic diving trials and men’s Olympic gymnastics trials on both Universal HD and nbcolympics.com. NBC will broadcast the decisive stages.
It’s a good deal for anyone who likes Olympic sports, even if it makes the USOC’s goofy past seem sillier than ever.
-- Philip Hersh
