NBC, Seoul Hit Snag on Contract

Unresolved issues between NBC and the Seoul Olympic Organizing Committee have forced an indefinite postponement in the signing of a final TV contract for the 1988 Seoul Games, both sides said Tuesday.

The signing of the contract, worth at least $300 million, had been scheduled for Friday at the International Olympic Committee headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland.

According to both sides, NBC has been asking Seoul for assurances of total recompensation--even including its production outlays--in case of a major boycott or other disruption of the Seoul Games, and Seoul has been balking.

NBC had an insurance policy against such contingencies in Moscow, but when the American boycott spoiled its plans to televise those Games, the compensation was not total. NBC had to take a $32 million write-off that year on Olympic losses.

Another issue involves NBC’s demand that its 1988 sponsors be allowed to use a composite Olympic logo in their advertisements without paying additional fees to the Seoul committee or the IOC. NBC would have had this right in televising the Moscow Games in 1980 and ABC had it in its coverage of the 1984 Los Angeles Games.

Michael Eskridge, the newly named NBC executive vice president for Olympic coverage, said that he considers none of the problems that have developed insurmountable. “I do expect we’ll work our way through them, but we haven’t yet,” he said. “Right now, it is very, very fluid.”

Barry Frank, Seoul’s American television agent, said Tuesday that he believes a deal will ultimately be worked out similar to that between the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee and ABC. Under that agreement, ABC would have received negotiated compensation had its ratings been adversely affected by a boycott or other developments. The 1984 Soviet boycott caused no discernible adverse effect, however, and ABC asked for nothing back.

In Seoul, officials at the organizing committee were quoted as saying that on the matter of compensation in case of trouble, Seoul is ready to buy insurance that would pay NBC what it might have lost on its contract, but not its production costs.

Under the agreement reached Oct. 3, NBC would pay Seoul $300 million for the American rights and more, up to a total of $500 million, depending on whether its advertising revenues exceed an amount that has not been announced. Seoul had originally hoped for a guaranteed $700 million, and Seoul officials have already said the lower amounts make an Olympic profit much less likely.