NBC Olympics Wins Four Olympic Golden Rings Awards for Rio Games Presentation

NBC Olympics won four prestigious Olympic Golden Rings awards – three golds and one silver – in Lausanne, Switzerland, at the International Olympic Committee’s biennial awards ceremony on Tuesday, Nov. 7. Jim Bell, President, NBC Olympics Production and Programming, accepted the four awards on behalf of NBCUniversal and NBC Sports Group.

Jim Bell

NBC Olympics won gold in the following three categories for its presentation of the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil:

  •  Best Olympic Feature: “The Most Beautiful Things” opened NBC’s coverage of the Rio Olympic Games. Voiced by the Emmy Award-nominated and Breaking Bad actor Giancarlo Esposito, the short film featured more than 25 Olympians and welcomed the audience to the Games. Click here to view.
  •  Best Athlete Profile: NBC Olympics chronicled the incredible journey of sprinter Wayde van Niekerk, who won gold in the men’s 400m and broke Michael Johnson’s world record. Click here to view.
  •  Best Olympic Digital Service: NBC Sports Group’s digital platforms amassed 100 million unique users and live streamed 2.71 billion minutes of Olympic coverage, both new records for event coverage. Click here to view.

NBC Olympics also won silver for Best On-Air Promotion for its Rio 2016 Olympic promotional campaign, which featured a primetime promotional “Road Block” across 18 NBCUniversal networks.

The Olympic Golden Rings are awarded by the IOC biennially to honor broadcasters for their outstanding coverage of the Olympic Games. Tuesday’s awards were specifically for Rio.

This year, clips from countries around the world were judged by an international jury, with winners receiving their prizes in Lausanne, Switzerland, in the presence of IOC President Thomas Bach.

NBCUniversal presented 6,755 hours of programming for the Games of the XXXI Olympiad. NBC Olympics’ coverage of the 15 nights of primetime competition registered a Total Audience Delivery average of 27.5 million viewers – ranking Rio 2016 as the second-highest average audience on record for the competition for any non-domestic Summer Games. Across NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app, there was a record 3.5 billion total streaming minutes.

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