The big business of the 2024 Olympics: Yahoo Finance Reports

As the 2024 Olympic Games continue in Paris, Yahoo Finance explored what investors should know about the Olympics' effect on business.

(00:19) Sunny Bonnell, Co-founder and CEO of Motto, gave insight into brand partnerships and product placements at the Olympics and how they can maximize ROI.

(4:28) Yahoo Finance entertainment reporter Alexandra Canal discussed NBCUniversal (CMCSA) and Peacock's record-breaking ad revenue during the Paris 2024 Olympics.

(5:56) Sportsimpacts CEO Patrick Rishe shared his thoughts on the increasing popularity of sports betting during the Olympics, noting which sports are most popular and which events inspire the most creative bets.

(12:39) Arctic Wolf CEO and president Nick Schneider outlined what cybersecurity risks at the Olympics may look like, including how AI could make cyberattacks more sophisticated.

(17:33) Finally, Yahoo Finance senior reporter Ines Ferré determined the monetary worth of Olympic gold medals by breaking down their gold (GC=F) content and exploring what athletes from various countries earn for winning them.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here.

This post was written by Meredith Lawrence and Neil Mulcahy.

Video Transcript

The 33rd Olympiad kicked off last week in Paris, drawing a massive viewership surge up 79% from the Tokyo games.

We spoke with industry experts to explore the business side of the games and their financial implications you can't watch for too long without seeing the Nike swoosh on someone's chest and then you have a B Inbev who's Corona Zero.

A non alcoholic beer is the official beer sponsor of the Olympics through 2028.

So what are the key things that come and fans get out of this partnership?

Joining me is now we've got Sonny Bunnell who is the co founder and CEO of motto.

Great to have you here with us.

So as we're looking through all of these brands trying to get either product placement or just some type of logo visibility, is there anyone that's standing out among the pack?

That's, that's doing it right?

And then those perhaps that spend a lot of money but are missing the mark.

Well, I think that some of there's so many brands that are uh you know, having a platform right now.

And I think one of the greatest things that we're seeing is, you know, Nike is what we call motto, a big idea brand.

So they know how to inspire people to push their limits.

And so you're seeing this kind of uh global recognition of these brands on this stage, which gives you so many eyeballs, so much awareness and just brand equity over the long haul.

So that's why these brands are really uh uh playing it well.

And I think Anheuser Busch who had mentioned that just shortly ago that they are getting into the game for uh non alcoholic beverages, which we're seeing sort of a fallback of Budweiser advertising this year in order to sort of lean forward and uh bring non alcoholic to the stage because I think the trends are showing that uh more awareness around those types of uh you know, good for you drinks of choice is what uh the audience is looking for, Sonny.

How long tail typically is the return on investment that a company that has some type of high profile athlete or positioning of their brand in an event like this multi week as it is grand.

And of course, world stage, how long tail is that return on investment as it flows through to their business?

Well, look at moto, we say great marketing is about meaning making, right?

It's about how do you attach meaning to your brand.

So in the case of even Ralph Lauren being the team usa uh outfits for the opening ceremony that immediately the CEO is talking about how much uh return on investment that's already bringing.

So that's driving, that's driving awareness, but it's a long and short game.

You have teams where or excuse me, brands that uh immediately have an RO I and then you have other opportunities where brand is a little bit of a labor of love where over time you begin to see uh that it drives sales, it drives awareness and it's not always immediate, but I think in the Olympics, in this particular case, it would be, you know, we often think about it and, and try to best evaluate which companies which uh athletes rather are winning at the Olympics.

And that's a little bit more clear to tell by the medals that they're able to achieve which brands though, from your perspective, which brand is winning the Olympics right now.

Oh, I think, I mean, I would bring it back to Nike.

I think one of their biggest campaigns right now winning isn't for everyone.

In my opinion, it's resonating, they're bringing it back to some of their roots.

I mean, Nike is the brand of athletes.

It's they lead the sports industry in innovation.

Um And so when you see an athlete, you see a player decorated or wearing any type of Nike, I think that it really sends us signal to the audience, the demographic.

Hey, I wanna be part of that too and it, it, it, it creates this kind of brand loyalty and brand association, which all great brands know that, you know, there's three areas of, of, of impact that you wanna have.

You wanna have brand repetition, you wanna have brand recognition and you wanna have brand association.

So even uh looking at a brand like Coca Cola, they've been advertising with the Olympics and partnering with the Olympics since 1928.

That's over 100 years of brand recognition, brand loyalty brand build.

And so you have to kind of play the, the long game when you're building out these brands and you're thinking about how to get that much exposure.

So I think those two brands in particular are doing it really well.

Olympic ad spending is on a tear with NBC universal seeing record breaking revenue for the upcoming games.

Part of the reason why streaming for the first time NBC universal streaming service, Peacock will be live streaming all 329 medal events encompassing over 5000 hours.

That means even more inventory for ad buyers to gobble up in April.

And BC said it was on track to set a new record after already notching $1.2 billion in advertising commitments for the games for context there.

The company is believed to have sold around 1.25 billion in national ad revenue related to the 2021 Olympic Games in Tokyo, but it's not just returning advertisers.

NBC said more than 350 million of the commitments actually came from ad buyers who had never bought during the Olympics before.

And remember this was over three months ago.

So expect that number to be even higher today.

Experts told me the Olympics C PM rate or the cost per 1000 ads are already at very healthy levels and even match some of the country's top sporting events.

Not only that, but the willingness from a buyers to pay those rates has also been quote very, very high overall.

We're in this moment where even more key events like the Olympics have been democratized for a buyers.

And with so many events, special programs and post game analysis to choose from both on linear and on streaming.

The desire to get in the game has never been stronger.

The 2024 Paris Games officially underway today, the opening ceremony and as the games begin for the athletes, the online betting community is ready to go as well and joining us now to talk about all this is Patrick Richie sports impacts CEO and Washington University in Saint Louis Sports Business program director, Patrick.

It is good to see you.

Uh So let's bottom line.

This, this Patrick Ho how popular do you think this is gonna be betting on the Olympics?

Can we, can we try to compare if at all to, you know what you would traditionally think is the marquee events, you know, March madness Super Bowl, Patrick.

Well, it won't be close to those, but it's gonna be more than it's been in the past.

If you look at March madness this past year, the American Gaming Association estimated that that was around 3 billion.

And of course, that's a three week event.

So similar in the sense that it's a longer duration event and obviously a one day event like the Super Bowl, the same organization, American Gaming Association estimated that the gambling on this year's Super Bowl was a billion.

So we put that into context and I don't have the numbers on how much was bet on the last Olympics.

But what we do know is this, we know that more states have legalized sports gambling here in the United States than was true to the last Olympic games.

We now have 34 states where it's legalized gambling.

So I suspect that some of the more popular sports, obviously men's women's basketball, some of the traditional popular high ratings, Olympic sports like gymnastics, uh those will track and field, those could see sports and, and one thing to focus on is a lot of exotic bets, right?

These unique bets, like, for instance, with the Super Bowl, there's always big news that's made out of exotic bets.

How much, you know, are you gonna win from flipping a coin?

Uh, who wins heads or tails?

Who's the first person to score a touchdown?

Well, in the Olympics, you could see people betting over under on how quickly a swimmer wins a race or, or a sprinter wins a race.

There could be a lot of, of creativity that the odds makers will try to implement when it comes to betting on this year's Olympics patter.

There's some, some sports, some events though where, I mean, how many people know enough about gymnastics, for example, you know, to place a smart bet or is the pool of people who have, you know, a real working knowledge?

Is it, is it actually gonna be kind of narrow, kind of small?

Well, that's one of the interesting things about this whole dynamic of gambling on the Olympics is on the one hand, the odds makers and the, and, and gaming companies, they want to create action because they want to create commission.

But on some of the let's call it sports where you may have more of a niche audience where the global public and the, and the national public doesn't necessarily have the same intel that they have, let's say on men's and women's basketball, this could create a market for what they call in the betting industry as wise guys.

In other words, people that maybe really know gymnastics or really know the swimmers, maybe they can get a leg up on, on the, on the house, on the gambling companies.

You know, one thing is for sure.

And that is all of these gaming companies, Caesars Draft Kings Fanduel, they've got some of the top analytics minds.

So they're gonna do their fair share of research to try to make sure that those wise guys don't have those opportunities.

But that is something that I do anticipate is maybe it won't be a huge market for betting on, let's say, you know, again, something like fencing or wrestling, but those people that know those sports really well could have a potential cashing in.

That's so interesting.

Uh The, another question I have for you, Patrick, you know, the big betting sites, I'm just curious, typically, what is business like for them during this, this time of year?

You know, late summer?

I mean, you know, obviously we have the Olympics now, but typically, what's it like when usually, you know, right now we got baseball and that's about it.

Yeah, typically it's slow.

Uh, typically this time of year it's baseball and W NBA.

And while I'm sure that the W NBA betting action is greater this summer because of the increased popularity of the W NBA that combined with baseball is still not gonna hold a candle to the flurry of gaming activity that happens starting in late August with college football and then of course, pro football.

So this, this is, again, it's apples and oranges when you're talking about the volume that you can expect or the bump that you can expect from summer Olympics betting anytime there's a Summer Olympics.

But that being said, I do expect that if there's a little bit of a bump, there'll be more of one this summer because of the fact that we do see not only, uh, uh, uh, increased legalization of gaming, but also, let's also keep in mind that because now these games this year are in Europe and Paris, it's kind of, at a time, it's a little bit easier for all of us to watch and betters like to see what happening in real time.

So I suspect that that also will lead to a little bit of a bump.

Uh, not only in gambling activity but also naturally in ratings final question, Patrick switch gears just a bit on that Warner Brothers, you saw Discovery Pa Patrick, you saw that news final, a lawsuit against the NBA today.

Uh, what it says was the league's unjustified rejection of the company's matching rights proposal or in the week.

I'm just curious to get your take Patrick, what, what you made of this?

What do you think the impact of all this is gonna be?

Well, as we all know, lawyers definitely, um, they make their money getting into the, the specifics, uh, and the, and the wording and the language of these contracts.

Uh I suspect that ultimately, one of two things will happen either, uh, the NBA will win this case and, uh, and, and, and, uh, Discovery and Turner will no longer, uh cover NBA games after this season or there could be some uh compromise and maybe 1/4 tier of games as packaged to allow them to come back in and still be part of the equation.

But um I think it was a calculated risk on Turner's part to again, uh a pass on, on making a bid in the first place.

And again, the NBA re recognizes that streaming is the future and bringing in younger fans.

And that's the reason why they wanna go with the Amazon bid and what, what uh discovery has offered just isn't the same in terms of the package that they are willing to put out there.

So ultimately, I do think either the NBA wins on this and Turner goes away or 1/4 the avenue of, of games will be created and they would still be able to keep their foot in the door.

Patrick, always so great to have you on the show.

Thanks for taking the time to chat.

Thank you.

Turning now to Cyber security.

France has reported 68 cyber attacks linked to the Olympic Games since July 22nd.

A big event like this has been hit before the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea were hit by a cyber attack later found to be committed by Russian hackers and the International Monetary Fund known in your hood as the IMF they found that cyber attacks have doubled since the pandemic.

So we wanna talk to a security expert about how you can protect your information and finances from these threats here.

With more.

We've got Jitu Patel who is the Cisco Executive Vice President and General Manager of Security and Collaboration.

Gito.

Great to speak with you here.

So as we're thinking through the best protection that people can make sure that they're putting in place for themselves.

Given the history of cyber security threats around events like this.

What are some of the first steps that they should be taking, Brent?

Firstly, thank you for having me.

It's good to see you again.

And you know, if you think about what's happening in the world right now, the adversaries are getting more and more sophisticated and these uh sporting events and venues with high density of people tend to be perfect, you know, um kind of venues for bad actors to um uh to go out and, you know, make sure that they can, um um you know, that they can continue to have, um, you know, uh threats get exercised.

So what we think needs to happen is both on the uh on the individual side, make sure that you're actually very careful when you go out there because we are all connected.

So first thing, make sure that the password that you use for any of the applications that you might have that you, you keep unique passwords, uh ensure that you've got two factor authentication turned on if you don't already because that's actually one of the largest areas where um, you know, people get hacked and they don't have to kind of, you know, two factor authentication turned on, uh, your, um, apple pay if you do have a phone, make sure that that's actually turned off.

If you're going to someplace, don't scan QR codes that are, um, you know, um, uh, from suspect kind of flyers because that might take you to a malicious website.

Those are the kind of precautions that you should be taking as a consumer as you go into these events.

And um and just know that you're gonna be uh you're gonna be targeted there.

So just be careful and on a on an alert, why, why are cyber attacks becoming so prevalent at, at big sporting events?

I mean, I remember II I was able to go on a tour and actually sit within uh a war room and a cyber security war room at one of those major sporting events last year.

And I was shocked at how many different threats they have to thwart on a real time basis.

You know, large sporting events have always in the history of time, been very attractive targets for attacks because of just the sheer size and scale of the impact and the disruption that that can cause.

Right.

So as a result, I think you can assume that if you have a large sporting event that's always going to be targeted.

And, you know, for example, at the Super Bowl, this year where we, um um you know, we have a, we have a partnership with them, Cisco's, um, the CIA Malwa Analytics blocked about 1.2 million, 1.2 million malicious files from entering the NF L's network.

So you should just expect that this is a par for the course and it's going to get more and more intense because these Attackers are not getting any less sophisticated, they're getting more sophisticated, They've got better tools, they're getting more co ordinated.

And so the defenses have to actually be, you know, one step ahead at all points in time and they do have an inherent advantage because they have to be right once, whereas a defender has to be right every single time G two, we only got about 15 seconds left here.

I, I also wanna kind of pivot and get some tips for travelers out there that are trying to also make sure that even as Labor Day is coming up and perhaps they have some late summer travels that they're best protecting their information.

What, what should they be making sure that they're, they're checking the boxes of in their own cyber security.

The most important thing that you can do if you don't have two factor authentication, make sure that you actually sign up for two factor authentication because that's where you see a fair amount of um attacks happen and then keep uh keep an eye on when someone sends you something before clicking on a website, know if that URL is in fact seems legitimate or not keep an eye on any kind of spelling mistakes and official emails that are coming out because those are all the kinds of things that are telltale signs of an attack, you know, coming your way and you want to make sure that you're, you're careful because an identity theft is, is a very traumatic experience for, for an individual consumer G Patel who is the Cisco Executive Vice President and General Manager of Security and Collaboration.

Great to see you once again.

G two hope to check back in the future.

Thank you.

The US has collected 31 medals total so far in the 2024 Olympics in Paris with six of them being gold superstars like swimmer Katie Ledecky Simone Biles and the US women's gymnastic team and the men's four by 100 m swimming relay team.

They've stood up on the podium and accepted that first prize medal around their next.

But how much gold is really in them?

Some asking the question, namely our producer and with rising gold prices, how much are they worth here?

With some of our answers?

We've got our very own, Anez, Fre Anez.

I mean, of course they're priceless.

Right.

Anez once you've won.

That's right.

But you always do wonder when they hold up that medal.

Hey, how much is that worth or is that really gold brad?

The gold medal is a highly coveted prize, of course, an Olympic gold medalist and part of the 1992 dream team US men's basketball player Clyde Drexel is currently auctioning off his medal with the current bidding at $270,000.

But the actual medal is not worth nearly as much as that.

The gold medal.

First of all is actually mostly silver, about 95% or over 500 g. And the outer coating is the other 5% is gold but just 6 g with gold trading at around $2500 an ounce and silver at around $29 an ounce.

That means that a gold medal is really worth about $1086.

Now, a silver medal is mostly pure silver with an iron center with about 500 g of silver and 18 g of iron inside.

So they're worth about $520.

And then you've got the bronze medals that are about 95 percent copper and a little zinc at about 455 g total.

And with copper near highs, bronze medals are worth about $250.

Of course, each metal like I said is special and the medals this year have a piece of the Eiffel Tower in them which adds a little extra value for all those Paris fans out there, Brad.

All right, I'm one of them.

And if these medals aren't worth much more than bragging rights.

Do athletes get paid for winning them?

Yeah, they do.

And it really varies by country.

So here in the US, gold medalists get a bonus of about $37,000.

Silver medalists get around $22,000 and bronze, around $15,000.

But that's according to the National Olympic Committee.

However, the US is not nowhere near where it's best paid.

Here are the top five.

According to Olympic committees and local reports, Hong Kong gold medalists get over $760,000.

In Singapore, they get 745,000 Indonesia.

They get $300,000.

Israel $271,000.

And the Republic of Kazakhstan gold medalists there get 250 $1000.

Brad.

Wow, excellent breakdown.

You've got our own, Josh Schafer actively watching from the newsroom commenting live during Slack and in Slack on this uh saying it's great.

And so I'm just relaying that message to you and it was very good.

Sounds like it's time to establish some citizenship elsewhere and become an Olympic athlete and win, win a medal too and win a medal.

That's, that's the key and thanks so much.