NBCUniversal Hits Record Spending on Olympic Ads; Microsoft Beats Revenue Forecasts; Spain Slaps Booking.com with €413m Antitrust Fine

In today’s news brief: NBCUniversal hits record Olympic ad spend; Microsoft beats revenue forecasts; Spain fines Booking.com €413m

Comcast-backed NBCUniversal, which has held US Olympic rights for more than three decades, is set to exceed its lofty ad spend expectations for the 2024 Paris Games. Total ad revenue for this year’s games is set to exceed $1.25bn (£0.97bn), a figure that would set a new record for Olympic ad spend, surpassing the $1.2bn (£0.93bn) spent on Tokyo 2021. All the sporting events can be watched on Peacock, which has been heavily promoted by NBCU’s other platforms. Peacock has significantly boosted ad performance, while also doubling digital ad revenue compared to Tokyo.

Microsoft also has some positive data to share this week: the tech titan beat its revenue forecast for the latest quarter, revealing a 15% year-over-year increase. However, it narrowly missed its revenue target for its Azure cloud computing service, which grew 29% from the expected 30% to 31%. The last few weeks have been quite tumultuous for Microsoft, as it has found itself at the center of a global technology outage that has led to billions of dollars in losses across industries from finance to travel. Microsoft has continued to solidify its position as a major player in the AI ​​landscape, with continued investment in OpenAI — although there have been questions about whether that will ultimately deliver the expected revenue increases.

Moving on to the EU for the latest in antitrust news, Spain has fined Booking.com €413.24m (£348.33m). Concluding an investigation into the online travel agency that began in 2022, Spain’s competition authority, the CNMC, found that Booking.com had abused its dominant market position over the past five years. The CNMC also confirmed that it imposed unfair trading conditions on hotels, and that its powers restricted rivals and made it significantly more difficult for them to compete in the sector. When you look at the numbers, it certainly adds up: during the period under investigation, the travel agency had a share of between 70% and 90% of online hotel booking services in Spain.

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