Speaking via satellite from Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, Ebersol said ad sales have picked up over the past four months. "We are well on our way now to doing the same kind of number we did in Torino and Salt Lake City before that," he said.
But, he said, NBC will lose money on an Olympics for the first time since he started producing the games in 1992 due to price increases in the rights to air the Olympics.
NBC paid $820 million for the rights to televise the Winter Games, according to the AP. That compares to the $613 million paid for the rights to televise the Olympics in Turin, Italy, in 2006.
The head of NBC's parent company, General Electric's Jeffrey Immelt, told investors recently that he expected NBC would lose "a couple hundred million bucks" on the games, the AP said.
At the press tour, Ebersol also said that the International Olympic Committee will more than likely open up the bidding on the rights to the 2014 and 2016 games this year, leaving the decision to go after the games General Electric rather than Comcast, NBCU's prospective new majority owner. Ebersol said government approval of Comcast's takeover of NBCU, agreed upon in December, is expected to take a year.
As for the 2010 Vancouver games, Ebersol touted nearly 835 hours of coverage of the games, airing across multiple NBC Universal outlets, nearly doubling the coverage of any previous Winter Olympics.
