THE BUSINESS OF THE OLYMPICS : NBC Will Come Away a Loser--and a Winner : Broadcasting: The network will lose millions on the Games, but its image and advertisers come out ahead. Already the talk turns to Atlanta in 1996.

As expected, NBC will lose as much as $100 million on its broadcast of the Summer Olympics in Barcelona, which conclude this weekend. But experts still foresee a bidding war for rights to the 1996 Games in Atlanta, with the participants including cable mogul Ted Turner.

Experts say NBC’s problems were exacerbated by its unsuccessful pay-per-view Triplecast, with sales reaching only 10% of projections.

But whereas the network will record the largest loss in history stemming from an Olympic broadcast, advertisers have come away winners. Ratings have run 17% higher than expected.

“It’s been great for advertisers and the network’s image,” observes Jerry Dominus, senior vice president at J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in New York.

NBC guaranteed advertisers that the Barcelona Games would be watched by 15.3% of TV households in prime time. As it turns out, more than 18% of the households have been tuned in.

Advertising executives say NBC purposefully low-balled its audience estimates because four years ago it overestimated the size of the Olympic audience and had to give away $70 million in free advertising time to unhappy sponsors.

Why did NBC do so much better in the ratings than projected?

The main reason is that the Barcelona Olympics are in August. The 1984 Games in Seoul, South Korea, were in September and had to compete against baseball and football on ABC and CBS.

“Four years ago the other networks effectively counter-programmed,” explains Steve Sternberg, vice president of research at the Bozell Inc. ad agency in New York. “But this time there is really nothing else on.

When NBC paid $401 million for the broadcast rights to the 1992 Summer Olympics four years ago, it allocated $100 million to the Triplecast, a bold pay-per-view venture that network executives originally thought would draw 3 million subscriptions.

But due to a lingering recession, a rocky marketing campaign and a costly $125 price tag, Triplecast attracted only 250,000 to 500,000 customers--NBC executives say they won’t know the final count for several weeks.

The recession also hurt NBC’s advertising sales, which despite meeting its $500-million target was still $50 million short of the amount sold for the 1988 Seoul Games.

NBC will share the Triplecast losses with its partner, Cablevision Systems Corp., the Woodbury, N.Y.-based cable TV operator. Cablevision will split 50% of the losses up to $50 million, which limits the network’s risk.

While NBC officials concede that they do not yet know the total extent of the losses, they point out the network nonetheless gets some long-term benefits from the two weeks of coverage.

NBC executives consider the Olympics an unparalleled platform to promote their new fall shows, news programming and talent. Some 400 promo spots for fall series, “NBC Nightly News With Tom Brokaw” and “The Today Show” aired in prime time over the last two weeks.

The unusual outcome of the 1992 Summer Olympics, where advertisers benefited but NBC lost considerable sums of money, points up the dilemma that broadcasters face when bidding for the rights to the 1996 Games in Atlanta gets underway early next year.

The Atlanta Organizing Committee is seeking $600 million, a 50% increase over the $401 million in rights fees NBC paid for Barcelona.

The steep cost has many industry observers speculating that the Atlanta Games may be shared by a broadcast network, a cable TV and a pay-per-view venture.

The most often cited potential 1996 Olympics carrier is Turner Broadcasting, which is based in Atlanta. Turner is expected to bid aggressively because of the cachet and obvious cross-promotional benefits the Games would bring the cable company.

Another potential rights holder next time may be Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Co., a major sports advertiser. Coke could acquire the rights, perhaps in conjunction with Turner, and then lease out coverage to one of the broadcast networks in exchange for exclusive advertising exposure.