What is going to happen to Olympic Sports and other Sports Broadcasters?

The Tokyo Summer Olympics will not be happening this year.  For obvious reasons, athletes and sporting federations have chosen to push back the Olympics to hopefully next year.  The Olympics have been postponed three times in history.  Once because of World War I and another because of World War II.  The Prime Minister of Japan has insisted the Olympics to not be cancelled but postponed to next year.  Although Japan has made great progress in dealing with this crisis, the rest of the World has not.  Not until 2 weeks ago, people were insisting that the Olympics go on, but it is becoming seen as impossible and seriously ill-advised to do so.

NBCUniversal has already signed contracts with local stations and distributors for them to use their production.  Now that the Olympics are pushed to next year and their contract extended, NBCUniversal could make them end up paying double. 

But given the long-term relationships with these companies, NBCUniversal will most likely come up with accommodations in order to not decimate these local stations.  On the other hand, NBCUniversal would probably end up facing serious lawsuits if they chose to make their partners pay double.  No decision has been made yet.

Media executives worry politicians may carry-out a plan to have all TV bills be paid back to their consumers.  A large domino effect that comes from no sports being paid.

There are campaigns for sports networks to refund some of the paid subscription back to the consumer for no sports.  This would result in hundreds of millions of dollars, but sports broadcasters are trying to come up with accommodations in order to not lose out on so much money.  Many broadcasting stations are figuring out ways to keep the consumer’s happy by rearranging release dates and payment plans.  The Michael Jordan documentary was supposed to be released in July but has been pushed up to keep consumers happy.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/01/coronavirus-sports-cancellations-set-up-media-fights-over-refunds.html

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