NBC Olympics Takes Home Five IOC Olympic Golden Rings Awards

NBC Olympics won five Olympic Golden Rings awards – three golds and two silvers – including gold for Best Olympic Program, this week in Monte Carlo, Monaco, at the International Olympic Committee’s biennial awards ceremony. NBC Olympics Executive Producer Jim Bell was in attendance in Monte Carlo to accept the five awards on behalf of NBC Sports Group Chairman Mark Lazarus and the entire NBC Olympics division.

NBC Olympics won gold in the following three categories for the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia:

• Best Olympic Program: NBC Olympics presented a Winter Olympics-record 18 days of programming, which featured an unprecedented 1,500+ hours of multiplatform coverage on the NBC broadcast network, four cable channels (NBCSN, CNBC, MSNBC and USA Network), NBCOlympics.com, and the NBC Sports Live Extra and NBC Olympics Highlights and Results apps.

• Best Olympic Feature: “Winter’s Theatre” opened NBC’s coverage of the Sochi Olympic Games. Voiced by Emmy Award-winning and Golden Globe-winning actor Peter Dinklage, the tease welcomed the audience to the Games, and introduced them to the history and culture of Russia.

• Best Digital Offering: NBC Sports Group’s digital platforms amassed nearly 62 million unique users (61.8 million) – a record for a Winter Olympics and topping the 2010 Vancouver Games by 29% — and more than tripled the hours of video consumption for Vancouver.  The USA-Canada Men’s Semifinal Hockey stream amassed over 2.1 million viewers.

NBC Olympics also won two silver awards: Best Olympic Athlete Profile for its feature on Canadian freestyle skier and two-time Olympic gold medalist Alex Bilodeau and his brother Frederic, and; Best On-Air Promotion for NBCUniversal’s Symphony initiative, which leverages the company’s promotional resources to drive awareness to key events.

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

This year, clips from countries around the world were judged by an international jury, with winners receiving their prizes in Monte Carlo, Monaco, in the presence of IOC President Thomas Bach. Members of the IOC Radio and Television Commission attended together with representatives from the Olympic rights-holding broadcasters, the Organising Committees for the Olympic Games in Sochi, Rio, and Pyeongchang, International Sports Federations and the City of Monte Carlo.