Dan Lovinger, a veteran ad-sales executive who has helped supervised outreach to advertisers for NBCUniversal venues ranging from prime-time TV shows to “Sunday Night Football” and the Super Bowl, is getting a new assignment.
Lovinger will oversee all efforts aimed at getting advertisers to sponsor NBCUniversal’s Olympics and Paralympics broadcasts, a pillar of the company’s programming strategy representing hundreds of hours worth of some of TV’s highest-priced inventory. Lovinger, who had been an executive vice president, has been elevated to president, and will report directly to Linda Yaccarino, NBCU’s global chairman of advertising sales and partnerships. Other sports efforts previously under Lovinger will be supervised by Mark Marshall, also a president of NBCU ad sales.
Lovinger’s new role “is essential for our future,” Yaccarino said in a memo to staffers.
In recent years, NBCU has dug even deeper into the Olympics, which it has rights to broadcast through 2032 under a pact believed to cost $7.75 billion. In an agreement struck with LA 2028, an organizing committee behind the 2028 Olympics, NBCU has pledged to offer long-term deals to partners for TV, digital, live event advertising, as well as brand activations and associations with Team USA. The events covered under the deal include the 2022 Olympic and Paralympic games in Beijing as well as the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris and the 2026 and 2028 events.
“Comcast NBCUniversal has a deep history with the Olympic and Paralympic Games—from our first Olympics broadcast of Tokyo in 1964, to our most recent success with the Summer Games in Tokyo where the team set records in number of advertisers and revenue,” said Yaccarino in her memo. “And looking to the future, especially in this next decade, our partnerships with the United States Olympic and Paralympic Properties—and with leaders like Kathy Carter and Casey Wasserman—are key to our success and need dedicated focus.”
Lovinger has been working in TV ad sales for more than two decades, holding senior positions at CNBC, VH1 and WarnerMedia’s Turner. Before being assigned to NBCU’s sports portfolio, he was tasked with overseeing ad-sales work for NBC, USA, Syfy and the company’s WWE programs. Before that, he oversaw sales efforts for NBCU’s Telemundo Spanish-language network.