U.S. Olympic TV Rights Wait for "Right Moment"

The IOC says it can wait to negotiate the U.S. TV rights for the 2014 and 2016 Olympics. (ATR)The chief IOC negotiator for the U.S. TV rights for the 2014 and 2016 Olympics tells Around the Rings that he is patiently waiting to strike a deal.

“We have to look at the right moment,” says Richard Carrion, IOC member in Puerto Rico and chairman of the IOC Finance Commission.

“We have to wait and see,” he said, acknowledging that the current economic climate is the driving force behind the relaxed approach to negotiations.

Speaking to Around the Rings during last week’s meeting of the IOC EB in Denver, Carrion says ESPN, NBC and CBS are the three networks he’s been speaking with lately, including meetings in Denver. While Fox is not among them, Carrion says it is possible the network will also make a bid when the time comes.

While Carrion says the focus is on 2014 and 2016, he says one of the U.S. networks is ready to bid on an eight-year package of the Games.

He says the deal announced last week with CCTV for Chinese coverage of the 2010 and 2012 Olympics is the last of the big deals for this quadrennial. He says it’s been in the making for two-and-a-half years.

CCTV will pay about $99.5 million dollars for the rights, almost three times what the network paid earlier in this decade.

Carrion notes that the new agreement with CCTV was made outside the normal channels of the turnkey Asian Broadcast Union pact that has been negotiated in the past.

“China was the largest deal within the ABU and it made sense to negotiate separately with them,” he says.

The IOC will negotiate separate deals for 2014/2016 in France, Spain, Germany and Great Britain, IOC member Richard Carrion negotiated the new TV rights deal with CCTV. (ATR)awarding Germany-based agency Sportfive the rights to sell the rights to the rest of Europe.

Carrion suggests that some rights for 2014/2016 won’t even be sold until the time of the London Olympics, if that’s what it takes for the market to stabilize for sports TV rights.

He says the rights packages left to sell for 2010/2012 are dwindling. The list includes Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and Chinese Taipei.

Written by Ed Hula

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