In the United States, the 2014 Winter Olympics were the first in a US$4.38 billion contract with NBC Sports, extending its broadcast rights to the Olympic Games through 2020 (with broadcast rights to Sochi valued at US$775 million alone).
As it did during the 2012 Summer Olympics (which brought strong viewership, and ultimately turned a profit of $88 million, unlike the previous Winter Olympics, which resulted in a loss of US$223 million), NBC offered live and tape-delayed coverage of events on television across its free-to-air network and a number of pay TV channels, and provided streaming of all events online and on mobile platforms to those who subscribe to the channels.
[1] ESPN and Fox Sports made competing bids for 2014 and 2016 Games only, but were outbid by NBC.
[4][5] In Australia, after several major commercial networks (among the only entities which can hold the rights due to similar anti-siphoning laws) pulled out of bidding on rights to both the 2014 and 2016 Games due to cost concerns (which included Nine Network, who had lost AUD$22 million on its joint coverage of the 2012 Games with Foxtel, and Seven Network, whose bid was rejected for being lower than what Nine/Foxtel paid), the IOC awarded broadcast rights to the 2014 Winter Olympics to Network Ten for AUD$20 million; a fraction of the amount paid by Nine and Foxtel for their own coverage.
[9] The CBC sub-licensed pay TV rights to TSN and Sportsnet (who served as the primary channels for pay TV coverage during the previous arrangement) in English, along with Réseau des sports and TVA Sports in French.