NBCU Olympics Ad-Sales Chief Dan Lovinger is leaving due to restructuring

Dan Lovinger, who oversaw increasingly complex Olympic Games ad sales for NBCUniversal and is credited with delivering record levels of Madison Avenue sponsorship for the recent Paris Olympics, is leaving the company as it looks to renew its efforts to attract advertisers sport to attract.

NBCU gave Lovinger a new role in 2022 overseeing all efforts to sell advertising for the Olympic and Paralympic Games, separating him from the rest of the company’s sports sales. However, with NBC’s recent pact to secure the NBA rights, the company sees sports as a significantly bigger driver of its business and is looking to sell Olympic deals and other sports sponsorships together in an effort to sell bigger packages.

In a memo sent to employees Monday, Allison Levin, president of NBCU Ad-Sales which oversees national, local and sports media sales, said sports and the Olympics would be sold together, an effort to create “a uniform strategy for all sports”. assets to maximize income from our properties.” The team will be led by Peter Lazarus, NBCU’s head of general sports sales who was appointed to the role in 2022.

The change is part of a restructuring led by Levin, one of her first major moves since arriving at NBCU from Roku in late 2023. She called on NBCU’s ad sales staff to become “hyper-focused on growing the business, selling to audiences first and maximizing revenue for our big moments.” The changes will result in a small handful of staffers leaving, according to a person familiar with the matter.

As a result of the changes, Levin plans to hire a new executive vice president who will oversee efforts to generate revenue from new advertisers and new types of partnerships. Many traditional media companies have sought to generate new revenue from small and medium-sized businesses that have traditionally not purchased national television. They’re also putting a new emphasis on so-called “audience buying,” or the purchase of packages aimed at marketing commercials to a particular niche of consumers, such as first-time car buyers or expectant parents.

More to come….