Behind The Scenes of NBC Sports' Paris Olympic and Paralympic Coverage in Stamford, CT
Almost 2,000 NBC Sports staffers will be covering the Paris Olympics from the division's headquarters in Stamford, handling more than 7,000 hours of programming on all platforms
July 30, 2024
More than 3,000 miles from Paris, NBC Sports' Campus in Stamford, Connecticut, an 115,000 square foot facility, is where nearly all of NBCUniversal's production and engineering infrastructure begins its journey to Paris. Close to 2,000 Olympic based employees, including our production crews, operations and engineering teams, and studio talent, are working out of the Stamford epicenter, representing nearly two-thirds of the entire Olympics coverage team.
Over the next few weeks, every piece of Olympic content, including thousands of feeds sent in from Paris, will pass through the Broadcast Operations Center in Stamford before going on-screen. NBCUniversal first broadcast the Games at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics with only 14 hours of coverage. This year, NBCUniversal will broadcast more than 7,000 programming hours across linear and digital platforms, including 5,000 of those hours streaming across NBC Sports' digital platforms.
Deadline spoke with Darryl Jefferson, SVP Engineering and Technology who showed two “subway maps,” multi-color flow charts indicating the path of video signals in 2012 and this year. He also showed off mixing rooms for Dolby Atmos sound and HDR signals showing the crispest possible resolution. The subway map has added dramatically more stops. On one recent day, Peacock showed about 280 individual streams, 65 of them unique and concurrent ones. When Peacock launched in 2020, the widespread belief in the industry and in tech circles was that livestreaming sports was a decidedly risky venture.
Jefferson drew a direct link to the positive reception to the Games and the step-up in technology. “People are really responding,” he said. “They seem hungry for as much as they can get and we now have the resources to provide it to them.”
NBC Sports produces nearly all sports programming out of its Stamford headquarters, and next year, will add NBA and WNBA games for the first time in 22 years.
How to Watch The Olympic Games Paris 2024 Across NBCUniversal
NBCU will surround this unprecedented Olympic presentation with its most comprehensive coverage plan ever. HERE are all the ways for U.S. viewers to watch the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Every day during the Summer Olympics, NBC will offer fans at least nine hours of daytime coverage of the Games’ most exciting events, including live finals coverage of swimming, gymnastics, track and field, and more. Considering the time difference (Paris is six hours ahead of the U.S.’s eastern time zone), fans will be able to watch the day’s most popular events live on NBC in the morning and afternoon. NBC will also deliver an enhanced Olympics primetime show each night, providing three hours of must-see entertainment.
In addition, every event from the Summer Olympics will be broadcast live on Peacock, which will be home to an innovative Olympics hub that will include "curated rails of live and upcoming events, dedicated in-depth hubs for nearly 40 sports, medal standings and an interactive schedule. Telemundo and Universo will also present more than 315 hours of LIVE apanish-language coverage of the Summer Games of the XXXIII Olympiad
Stay up to date with all NBC Olympics content with our Olympics Hub.
