Super Gold Sunday 🥇 🏈

Day 10: NBC attempts the ambitious double

Feb 13, 2022

Today is the biggest day in television sports history.

Or so NBC hopes it will be. They will be airing 18 straight hours of Super Bowl LVI and the XXIV Olympic Winter Games, the first time one network has carried both events on the same day.

This isn’t just a random concurrence either. NBC wanted it, and actually swapped Super Bowls with CBS in 2019 to get this year’s big game. Starting with next year’s massive new NFL TV deal, the 2026 and future Winter Olympics will also align for the Peacock Network.

NBC desperately needs today to be huge. Despite the loyal viewership of this newsletter’s readers, Olympics TV ratings are historically bad. To goose the ratings, the network is pulling out all the stops. They’ve brought Shaun White to LA straight from his final Olympic competition, but poor Mike Tirico flew from Beijing to Connecticut to the Super Bowl in LA and eventually back to Beijing. That’s nearly 12,000 miles in the pursuit of ratings.

To make sure they capitalize on the sure-thing Super Bowl ratings, NBC is breaking a 29-year tradition of airing an entertainment program after the game (The Wonder Years premiered in this slot in 1988.) Naturally they are switching right back to the Olympics, and showcasing Women’s Monobob, a new sport with Team USA favored to medal.

Of course if football isn’t your thing, Peacock will still be streaming the Games all day.

What You Missed Last Night

Biathlon Pursuit is a wild event. Gold medal winners in the Individual and Sprint events are given a head start. The remaining athletes wait in the starting gate, and ski out in order based on their finishing time behind the Sprint event winner.