Quebecers’ enthusiasm for the Olympics is unwavering: in a survey conducted in the spring, nearly half of them already said they intended to watch the Paris Games, which begin Friday. It’s no surprise that the advertising blocks broadcast during the competitions are also popular with advertisers — to the great delight of the competition’s official broadcaster, CBC/Radio-Canada, which earns valuable revenue from them.
The Crown corporation declines to say how much it makes specifically from the Olympics in sponsorships and advertising revenue. But a quick glance at its annual reports shows that we’re talking big money here. In its 2021-22 financial year, CBC/Radio-Canada reported that its total revenues increased 29 per cent, “primarily due to growth in advertising revenues in the context of coverage of the Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022 Olympic Games,” it said.
“Even though broadcasting rights are becoming more and more expensive, we can assume that it’s an operation that remains profitable for CBC/Radio-Canada. Because otherwise, they wouldn’t buy the rights every year. For a broadcaster, it’s an event that remains very interesting to broadcast, because it speaks to a huge number of different people, from all age groups, which allows them to attract a wide variety of advertisers,” emphasizes Benoit Séguin, professor of sports management and marketing at the University of Ottawa.
CBC/Radio-Canada is the official broadcaster of the Olympic Games in Canada until at least 2032, when the Summer Games will be held in Brisbane, Australia. Bell-owned RDS is acting as a partner and will broadcast some of the Paris Games competitions on its network. And, for the first time this year, all competitions will also be broadcast in real time on the Tou.tv platform.
“The multiplication of platforms allows us to maximize our audiences. We will be able to reach people who would not have followed the Olympics if they had only been presented on TV,” says François Messier, general director of sports at Radio-Canada.
A bigger effect at CBC
It is already known that the 2024-2025 Olympic year will not be as lucrative for the public broadcaster as 2021-2022, when the Summer and Winter Games were exceptionally held in the same financial year, with the Tokyo Games having been postponed by a year due to the pandemic. Still, the public broadcaster can expect growth in its advertising revenue thanks to the Paris Games. The same was also true after the Rio Games in 2016 and Pyeongchang in 2018.
Every time, broadcasting the Olympic Games proves financially beneficial for Radio-Canada. But the contribution of new advertising revenue generated by the Olympics is even more valuable for CBC, which has more difficulty attracting advertisers in normal times, since its audience shares are much lower than those of its French-language counterpart. In 2016-2017, the year the Rio Games were broadcast, Radio-Canada’s advertising revenues increased slightly, by 6%, while those of the English service jumped by 34%.
“The Olympics remain an extremely important moment for all Canadian audiences, regardless of political allegiance. People rally around our athletes, in English as well as in French,” adds François Messier.
Two solitudes
Quebec was one of the regions of the country with the highest Olympic interest last spring. In a survey conducted by the Observatoire des technologies médias (OTM), a division of Radio-Canada, 44% of Quebecers said they intended to watch competitions during the Games, compared to 30% of Ontarians and British Columbians.
In all, 55 per cent of Canadians said they intended to watch the opening and closing ceremonies of the Games. That was even before strong rumours began circulating about the possible appearance of Celine Dion and Lady Gaga at the opening show, which begins Friday at 1:30 p.m. Montreal time.
The enthusiasm for the Olympic Games is shared by all Canadians, but it is expressed differently. A sign that the two solitudes persist: in the OTM study published last week, 17% of anglophones said they planned to wear clothing in the colours of the Canadian team during the Olympic period, but barely 2% of francophones wanted to do the same.