NBC Gets Sydney, Salt Lake Games : Olympics: Network’s unorthodox bid of $1.27 billion heads off competition.

NBC announced a $1.27 billion-dollar deal with the International Olympic Committee on Monday, ending CBS’ Winter Olympics run and cutting Fox owner Rupert Murdoch out of a share of the 2000 Summer Games in his homeland.

NBC will pay $705 million for exclusive U.S. TV rights to the Summer Games in Sydney, Australia, in 2000, and $545 million for the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in 2002, both records by huge margins.

“This was just too good a deal for us not to say yes to,” Dick Pound, the IOC TV committee chairman, said. “This was a preemptive bid on the part of NBC.”

Pound said NBC also will supply each organizing committee with about $10 million in promotional support, driving the total value of the package to at least $1.27 billion.

NBC bid $456 million for the 1996 Atlanta Games, at the time a record for the Summer Olympics, and CBS’ bid of $375 million for the 1998 Nagano Games was a winter record.

Murdoch, the billionaire media mogul who owns Fox, was known to be keenly interested in bidding for the Sydney Games. Although a U.S. citizen, Murdoch is a native of Australia, where he began his television and newspaper empire.

He never even got to make a bid. Neither did ABC or CBS, both of which were interested in bidding on one or both of the Games. Bidding on Sydney wasn’t expected to take place until mid-September, and the Salt Lake City organizers traditionally would have had to wait another two years to get a TV deal.

NBC has won the rights to four consecutive Summer Games. It televised Seoul in 1988, Barcelona in 1992 and already has been announced as the U.S. rights holder to the Atlanta Games. It paid $300 million for the Seoul Games and $401 million for Barcelona.

NBC has not done a Winter Games since Sapporo, Japan, in 1972, for which it paid a paltry $6.4 million. CBS did the last two Winter Games--in Albertville in 1992 and Lillehammer in 1994.

The unique two-Games deal was initiated by NBC and took less than a week to put together.

“Last Tuesday, there were 20 or 25 of us huddled in Atlanta for a production meeting,” Dick Ebersol, NBC’s Sports president, said. Bob Wright, network president, called, asking to go over the numbers for a Sydney bid.

Ebersol and Wright met the next morning, and “in the course of that meeting, Mr. Wright suggested we might be better off to go for two Olympics.”

The offer had two stipulations. One, the IOC had until this weekend to make up its mind, or the offer was withdrawn and NBC would not bid at all on the Sydney Games. Two, the IOC couldn’t tell any of the other networks, or the offer was off.

“This didn’t circumvent our process as such,” Pound said. “It’s kind of an ad hoc process. We don’t have anything set in stone.”

Pound said he informed the other networks Monday, just before the announcement.

“Their reaction was disappointment and a reluctant admiration for the initiative that NBC took,” Pound said, and then he was asked for Fox’s reaction, in particular.