The Big TV Sports Story Of 2022 Will Emerge From NBCUniversal's Coverage Of The Beijing Winter Olympic Games

The Big TV Sports Story
Of 2022 Will Emerge From
NBCUniversal’s Coverage Of
The Beijing Winter Olympic
Games

(Which Will Also Provide A Big
Lesson for PR People)
Arthur Solomon

There are some important lessons that emerged from the TV
sports scene in 2021:

That the decline on watching football on TV has disappeared.

That the Tokyo Summer Olympics was the least watched of any
Olympics in prime time.

That NBCUniversal ignored the various controversies during the
Tokyo Games as if they never happened.

                         That the same network, thus far, is
                         letting criticism from U.S. elected
                         Senators and Congressmen and Human
                         Rights organizations regarding its
                         televising the Winter Olympics in
                         totalitarian Beijing, China, pass
                         without any response.

That all the major sports leagues have changed their positions
regarding betting and promote it by allowing TV commercials

encouraging viewers to gamble from home on its telecasts.

And that, as usual, TV sports commentators too often sing the
praises of athletes on the field performance and ignore their
off the field deplorable misbehavior. (To me, that’s a big
story. But to others it isn’t because it is an on-going
happening.)

All of the above, of course, is yesterday’s news.

But what is emerging as the big sports news story of this year
will not be known until after the Winter Olympics in Beijing,
China, which NBCUniversal will be televising on various
platforms beginning February 3, although the official dates
for the games are February 4-20. It is how NBC will report on
the human rights abuses from China and how many viewers will
tune in to the games because, thus far, various polls have
revealed scant interest in the games.

Not since Berlin’s Nazi Olympics in 1936 has the choice of a
city to host the Olympic Games received so much criticism
because of its human rights record. Several countries,
including the United States, have accused China of committing
genocide against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities and
cracking down on freedom in Hong Kong and Tibet’.

In addition to watching if NBC will remain mute about the
human rights issues during its Olympic reports, also closely
watched will be the TV viewership of the Beijing Games. A Pew
Research Report from June revealed that “In the United States
90% say Beijing does not respect individual liberties,
including 93% of Republicans and Republican-leaning
independents and 87% of Democrats and Democratic leaners.”

That’s not good news for NBCUniversal and the Beijing Games
sponsors   because   a 5W Public Relations’ 2020 Consumer
Report revealed that consumers are becoming more politically
and socially conscious and buy products from businesses that
adhere to their political and social beliefs. In addition, an

annual Accenture Strategy Global Consumer Pulse Research
survey of nearly 30,000 people found that “Among consumers,
62% want companies to take a stand on the social, cultural,
environmental and political issues that they care about the
most.”

Adding to the concern of the Olympic Family was what emerged
from a Morning Consult poll, conducted December 3-6, that
could not have made bean counters at NBC happy. The poll
showed that “there are troubling signs unrelated to
geopolitics about the Winter Games’ potential to engage the
American public. The share of Americans aware that the next
Olympics are scheduled for winter 2022 (prior to being
prompted with questions about a boycott) was just 26 percent,
a figure that remained unchanged from a late October
poll. Meanwhile, the share of respondents who expect to watch
“a lot” or “some” of the Beijing Olympics (44 percent) was 36
percent lower than at roughly the same point prior to last
summer’s Tokyo Games, which were the least-viewed Olympics on
record.

However, all the criticism of the IOC, NBCUniversal and its
brand sponsors haven’t affected the sale of commercials.
NBC has nearly sold all of its advertising space for coverage
of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing months ago,
according to published reports.

But Rich Perelman, in the January 6 edition of Sports Examiner
wrote, “It is one month until the opening ceremonies of the
Beijing Olympic Winter Games. Yet a scan of the digital
presence of the five U.S.-based global IOC sponsors might lead
you to believe the Games weren’t even happening.” Perelman
continued, “That’s the opening of a short but insightful post
by highly-respected sponsorship strategist Jim Andrews writing
on TicketManager.com.”

NBC is in the proverbial pickle. It has invested a fortune in
its quest to televise Olympic Games through 2032. In 2014, NBC

paid $7.75 billion for the rights to broadcast the Olympics in
the U.S. until 2032. It wants to maximize its investment by
steering clear of Olympic controversies. And, of course, it
does not want to anger the Chinese government, which has twice
cracked down by canceling National Basketball Association
telecasts in the country because of comments criticizing
China’s human rights record.

The state-run China Central Television stopped televising NBA
games in 2019 when on Oct. 4, 2019, Daryl Morey, then the
general manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted an image that
said “FIGHT FOR FREEDOM STAND WITH HONG KONG.” The NBA was
blacked out in China for more than a year.

More recently, “Chinese broadcaster and NBA partner Tencent
blocked Boston Celtics games on its platforms,” reported the
Associated

Press, “in apparent response to comments that Celtics center
Enes Kanter made to advocate Tibetan independence. Kanter, as
part of a series of social media posts, also called Chinese
President Xi Jinping a “dictator.” In a November 20 opinion
column in the Wall Street Journal, Kanter also called for a
boycott of the Beijing Olympics, writing, in part, “The IOC
has ignored Beijing’s abuses for years. As athletes concerned
about human rights and justice, we must pressure the IOC to
move the games. All the gold medals in the world aren’t worth
selling your values and your principles to the Chinese
Communist Party. Wake up and speak up. Change is coming, and
no one can stop it. They can’t silence us all.”

In the days leading up to the February 4 Opening Ceremony of
the Beijing Olympics, and during it, NBC will be attacked for
helping burnish the reputation of a totalitarian country by
providing it with a media platform that will be watched by
millions. The Peacock Network will be defended by those who
say that politics has no place in sports, as the IOC has long
claimed.

NBC did not receive high marks for its coverage of the Tokyo
Olympic because it failed to report on controversies. Perhaps
a headline on a Variety December 8 article summed up the
concerns of media watchers critical of the Beijing Olympics.
It said, “Can NBC Sidestep the Peng Shuai Scandal and Deliver
Credible Coverage of the Beijing Winter Olympics?”

The answer will not be known until after the Closing
Ceremonies on February 20.

But the big lesson that PR pros should remember from the
controversies engulfing the Beijing Olympics has also thus far
been an unsolvable problem for more than a year: How to obtain
favorable earned media for a client that is involved with a
project that is under constant attack for wrong doing? So far
in the U.S. sponsors of the Olympics have largely been mute
about their involvement. And that might be the answer to the
big lesson emanating from the Beijing games: Sometime the best
PR strategy for a client in a weak position is not to try to
defend itself, as Boeing did during its 737 Max disasters and
Wells Fargo did during its problems, but to advise the client
to keep a low profile until the problem is resolved because,
history shows, that often the more a client with a PR crisis
says, the   more   it   leads   to   additional   negative   media
coverage.

                        About the Author: Arthur Solomon, a
                        former journalist, was a senior
                        VP/senior counselor at Burson-
                        Marsteller, and was responsible for
                        restructuring, managing and playing
                        key roles in significant national and
                        international sports and non-sports
                        programs. He now is a frequent
contributor to public relations publications, consults on
public relations projects and was on the Seoul Peace Prize

nominating   committee.      He   can   be   reached   at
arthursolomon4pr@juno.com.