PEACOCK POWER TALK ABOUT SMOKING THE COMPETITION: WITH THE 1996 ATLANTA GAMES ALREADY IN HAND, DICK EBERSOL OF NBC SPORTS HAS GRABBED FIVE MORE OLYMPICS-- IN THE YEARS 2000 TO 2008

Bob Costas calls Dick Ebersol "the czar of my universe." In his
role as president of NBC Sports--and sportscaster Costas's
boss--Ebersol makes deals of exquisite timing worth hundreds of
millions of dollars and then celebrates them over Dewar's on the
rocks in a back booth at Nanni Il Valletto, a restaurant in
midtown Manhattan, from which he nods cordially at other czars
of other universes. One recent evening Ebersol entered Nanni's,
an unobtrusive little gem with sumptuous banquettes, to find ABC
News president Roone Arledge in one corner and media magnate
John Kluge in another. Arledge gestured Ebersol over. "You've
been cleaning some clocks lately," Arledge said.

Ebersol accepted the compliment with as much modesty as he could
summon, which wasn't a lot. Ebersol was still exulting in the
unprecedented double-fisted grab he had made on NBC's behalf in
August, when he secured the U.S. television rights to the 2000
Summer Olympics in Sydney and the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt
Lake City with a stunning preemptive bid of $1.25 billion.
Ebersol had pulled off his masterstroke with both secrecy and
flair. What Arledge didn't know as they chatted, and what
Ebersol with his usual sangfroid gave not a hint of before
sitting down to his sole meuniere, was that he was about to
dwarf that deal with an even bigger one. In fact, Ebersol had
taken a call from the president of the International Olympic
Committee (IOC), Juan Antonio Samaranch, right before dinner.
Now he didn't just have two Olympics. He had three more.

A week later, on Dec. 12, the announcement came: Ebersol and NBC
had consummated the richest, boldest, riskiest rights
acquisition in television history by securing the rights to the
2004, 2006 and 2008 Olympics for the grand sum of $2.3 billion.
The other big over-the-air networks, ABC, CBS and Fox, never got
in the game (box, page 60). Ebersol and his team had made some
of the most opportunistic businessmen in the world, from
Disney's Michael Eisner and Michael Ovitz, whose acquisition of
Capital Cities/ABC is pending, to Rupert Murdoch at Fox, look as
though their pants had just dropped around their ankles.

The two NBC deals continued the escalation of fees for U.S.
Olympic TV rights (chart, this page). In addition to $705
million for Sydney and $545 million for Salt Lake, Ebersol's
network has agreed to pay $793 million for the 2004 Summer
Games, $613 million for the 2006 Winter Games and $894 million
for the 2008 Summer Games. With its combined $3.55 billion
commitment, NBC has locked up the Olympics for the next
generation. With the '96 Summer Games also on NBC, the network
will carry six of the next seven Olympics; only the '98 Winter
Games in Nagano, Japan, which will be on CBS, break NBC's streak.

The implications for the other networks are potentially
devastating from a programming standpoint because Ebersol has
now all but cornered the market on the premier sports events. In
1996 the Super Bowl, the baseball All-Star Game, the NBA Finals
as well as the Atlanta Olympics will all be on NBC, as will be
the U.S. Open golf tournament, Wimbledon, the French Open and
the Breeders' Cup. Never before will so many of sports' top
events have been gathered in one place. NBC's murderers' row of
events will leave the competition little more than an NCAA
basketball tournament here (CBS) or a British Open there (ABC).
In '96 Fox will have to be content with the World Series and
splitting the Stanley Cup playoffs and finals with ESPN. Even
Arledge, the man who virtually invented sports television, who
made the Olympics a blue-chip event in the '60s and who hired
Ebersol when Ebersol was a 19-year-old Yalie, is floored. "He's
lapped the field," Arledge says.

How has Ebersol done it? In part by being utterly suave. In the
last several months it has become apparent that Ebersol, 48,
makes deals not just of substance but of unmistakable style. He
sports a semipermanent Telluride ski tan as he walks and talks
with a rhythm of easy success, as befits the product of a
well-to-do Connecticut family and Yale. "I like to win, I like
to have fun, and I don't like to wear a coat and tie," Ebersol
says.

Ebersol's colleagues and competitors have learned that beneath
the casual attire and attitude is a thoroughly rapacious
businessman. And a visionary one. In 1991 Ebersol went to Bob
Wright, the CEO of NBC, with a strategy to collect the crown
jewels in sports and spelled out what doing so could mean for
the network's parent company, General Electric. As television,
cable-system and computer technology change kaleidoscopically,
one constant is the need for software, or programming. What
better way, Ebersol figured, to compel every member of the
family to watch your network than to secure the Olympics well
into the next millennium? Wright bought into Ebersol's thinking,
then the two sold the idea to General Electric chairman Jack
Welch.

Sealing the Olympic deals was a team effort, with crucial input
from Welch, as well as from Wright and a pair of NBC executives,
Randy Falco and Alex Gilady, an Israeli who is also an IOC
member. But the quarterback was Ebersol. "He's the lead dog
here," Wright says. "His focus all along has been to gather all
the major sports properties. And he has the ability to deliver."

He also has an almost unbroken record of success: In 1975 he
launched NBC's Saturday Night Live with Lorne Michaels. As an
independent producer, he created Saturday Night's Main Event
wrestling extravaganzas and Friday Night Videos in the mid-'80s.
One of his few failures was his decision to replace Jane Pauley
with Deborah Norville on the Today show. His professional elan
is matched by a personal one. He wed actress Susan Saint James
after just a six-week courtship. They have three sons and
recently celebrated their 14th anniversary.

The latest Olympics' deal may be even more of a blind leap than
Ebersol's whirlwind courtship and marriage. In addition to
risking economic slumps over the next 13 years that could wreak
havoc with the advertising market, from which the network must
garner the money to cover its investments in the Games, NBC has
purchased Olympics at sites that have yet to be determined. In
the Games as in real estate, the most important factors are
location, location, location. The network's multibillion-dollar
commitment doesn't entitle it to any formal input in the
site-selection process, though it's hard to believe its opinions
will go unheard. But coming on the heels of the Atlanta and Salt
Lake City Olympics, none of the three Games is likely to be held
in the U.S. (chart, page 57).

Despite this, Ebersol could wind up a big winner. For one thing,
if inflation exceeds the 3% rate built into its deal with the
IOC, NBC would be paying off its investment in cheap dollars.
The Atlanta Games may be a good omen; NBC paid $456 million for
those rights, and Ebersol says ad sales have passed the $600
million mark.

There is art to an Ebersol deal. It's a seduction. He determines
what the object of his affection wants to hear, whether that
object is basketball commissioner David Stern, acting baseball
commissioner Bud Selig, or Samaranch and IOC television
negotiator Dick Pound, and then he murmurs it into their ears.
Ebersol has a habit of likening negotiations to love affairs,
and his blockbuster Olympic deals owe much to the strength of
his personal charm. "He has this quality of remembering things,"
Costas says. "Things about your personal life that are important
to you, like what grade your kids are in or where your wife went
to college."

Ebersol knows what people want to hear, because he is
consistently better prepared and informed than his rivals. He
rises at 6:15 every morning in his Manhattan apartment with a
wraparound terrace and reads four daily newspapers. He also
reads the Star and the National Enquirer, although he doesn't
have them delivered to his house. "I also read the New York
Post," he says. "In the car." He does not go anywhere without a
fax machine. "He comes home and sits in his boxer shorts,
reading a stack up to his knees," says Saint James.

Ebersol is so on top of his game that he drives his friends and
associates crazy. Recently he called Stern to inform him what
time he thought the NBA All-Star Game should be telecast ... in
2002. "It's totally obsessive-compulsive behavior," Stern says.
"To the point where you say, 'For crissake, go out on a boat or
something.'"

But Ebersol's facility to absorb and process huge amounts of
information was one of the keys to staging his Olympic coup. So
was his ability to act fast. Two days before NBC announced that
it had acquired the Sydney and Salt Lake City Olympic Games, the
idea for a precedent-setting package deal did not even exist.

Ebersol's excellent Olympic adventure began on Aug. 1, when he
was in Atlanta on business and received a call from Wright, who
was ready to crunch numbers on the Olympic-rights bidding for
Sydney, which was expected to occur in a few weeks. Wright
wanted to take an aggressive stance. The Australian-born Murdoch
badly wanted the U.S. rights for Fox and had indicated he was
willing to spend $701 million to get them. Also, just that day,
Westinghouse had agreed to purchase CBS, and only a day earlier
Disney and Cap Cities/ABC had agreed to merge. The competition
suddenly had much deeper pockets. Wright asked Ebersol to fly
back to New York to talk.

At 9 a.m. on Aug. 2, Ebersol handed Wright a nine-page financial
analysis. Murdoch loomed as such a threat that Ebersol was
considering making a joint bid with ABC. The NBC and ABC staffs
had spent weeks talking, but Wright didn't like the numbers. At
noon he asked the fateful question: "Can't we do this ourselves?"

It was clear to Ebersol that it would take a daring move to beat
Murdoch, so he told Wright: "The only way we'll get this is with
a novel idea--and a lot of money." Wright said he would have a
hard time shelling out such a sum for an Olympics that, because
of the 15-hour time difference between Sydney and the U.S. East
Coast, would be primarily a taped event. Wright was far more
enamored of the 2002 Winter Games, which would be a live event.
But the Salt Lake City Games weren't on the table yet. It was at
that moment that Wright and Falco had an idea: Why don't we go
for two?

Ebersol, Falco and Ed Swindler, from NBC's finance department,
got out pencils and calculators and rapidly drew up a proposal.
Using the speaker phone, Wright then called Welch on Nantucket,
where he was vacationing. Ebersol explained that a
double-barreled approach was a long shot and that speed and
secrecy would be of the essence. "Why not take my plane?" Welch
suggested.

Ebersol sent a message to his wife and kids, who were off
sailing: "Gone to Europe." Then Ebersol, Falco and Gilady, whose
IOC membership gives him an entree to Samaranch that makes
executives of rival networks see red, boarded the GE Gulfstream
IV at a suburban New York airport and flew to Goteborg, Sweden,
where the World Track and Field Championships were about to
begin. There they hoped to meet with Pound, the Montreal tax
attorney who is an IOC member as well as the committee's chief
TV negotiator for North America.

Ebersol had serious doubts about the chances of success. "I
thought it was one in 10 at best," he says. He brainstormed
furiously, determined to make the scheme as attractive as
possible to the IOC. Using his self-described talent for "saying
what people need to hear without it costing us too much,"
Ebersol came up with an inspired sweetener: an offer to
broadcast a weekly Olympic magazine show from 1996 to 2002.
Ebersol knew coverage in non-Olympic years held appeal for
Samaranch. "I knew they had always wanted a regular vehicle,"
Ebersol says.

The NBC trio landed in Goteborg at 10 a.m. on Aug. 3 and stole
into the local Sheraton, where numerous IOC officials and the
ABC contingent broadcasting the meet were billeted. But there
was a mix-up: Pound wasn't in Goteborg, and Samaranch wasn't
expected until that night. The NBC team piled into a back room
of the hotel. "A room without windows," Ebersol says. They
stayed there all day, fearing they might be spotted. "We camped
out and ordered up cigars," Ebersol said. "The room stank."

At about 5 p.m. Gilady, who had a good cover in his IOC
membership, went to the lobby to find Samaranch, who arrived
minutes later. Gilady whispered to Samaranch that Ebersol was
upstairs with a proposal. Ebersol and his aides took a service
elevator to the top floor of the hotel and crept down the hall
to Samaranch's room, past the doors of ABC staffers.

When Ebersol made his presentation, he was adamant on one point:
He had to have an answer by Friday afternoon, with
confidentiality in the interim, or the offer would be redrawn.
After just 20 minutes Samaranch had heard enough. "He said,
'Deek, this is a very, very impressive idea,'" Ebersol recalls.
Samaranch then asked Ebersol to travel to Montreal the next day
and make the same presentation to Pound.

That night Ebersol and his team dined in private with Samaranch.
Instead of discussing the deal, Ebersol talked about Atlanta and
about the subject of the senior thesis he wrote as a history
major at Yale in 1969: then-IOC president Avery Brundage.

Ebersol and Falco were up at dawn to jet to Montreal. He was
horrified to see his driver in the lobby holding a sign that
read DICK EBERSOL, NBC. "After all that secrecy...." he says.
Fortunately no one else was in the lobby.

"On the plane, Falco slept. I worried," he says, and he came up
with yet another sweetener: He would offer the IOC $20 million
worth of promotional airtime. As the Gulfstream IV neared the
Canadian coast, Ebersol spotted a huge iceberg, which he
considered to be a good omen. Later he found out that the
sighting was just 25 miles from where the Titanic sank.

At 10 a.m. on Aug. 4, the NBC contingent arrived at Pound's
office. Ebersol outlined the deal. Pound immediately called
Samaranch. "We should do it," he said. The group lit cigars, and
Pound began writing draft agreements on his laptop computer.
After three drafts they had a deal. NBC had not one but two
Olympics, Sydney and Salt Lake City.

It was 4 p.m. Friday, 55 hours after the process had begun.

Three days later, after a press conference to announce the
agreement, Ebersol phoned Samaranch as a courtesy. Samaranch
congratulated Ebersol on the "stability" they had achieved and
on the "partnership" they had forged. After Ebersol hung up, he
was struck by Samaranch's repeated references to the long-term
nature of their relationship. "I sensed something in his voice,"
he says. He called Wright and said, "I think we can do another
deal."

Wright burst out laughing. "You're kidding," he said. "Is this
realistic?" Once Ebersol persuaded him that it was, Wright told
Ebersol to go ahead.

Ebersol spent the next six weeks pulling together his plan.
"This one didn't have the intrigue of the first one," he says.
He flew from the Ryder Cup in Rochester, N.Y., to Switzerland on
Sept. 25 to see Samaranch again. In the Lausanne Palace suite
where Samaranch lives, Ebersol outlined his plan to acquire the
2004 and 2006 Olympics. Pound, who was also in Lausanne, says,
"I was one-and-a-half times as impressed with this idea," and he
asked for time to write a "term paper" on how the deal could
work. The principals nicknamed their endeavor the Sunset
Project--"because we knew it would be the end of Olympic
negotiating for all of us," Ebersol says. "It would take us to
the sunset of our careers."

The negotiating teams met again on Nov. 7, at which point Pound
had a surprise: The IOC wanted to deal in a full quadrennium, so
2008 was on the table. This was important because the IOC sells
sponsorships in four-year packages. The sides met next on Nov.
20, and when they broke that day, they had an agreement. Several
more days were spent ironing out the details.

Ebersol's critics have suggested that he gets the jump on his
foes by saying what suits his purpose without precisely lying.
The New York Times sports media columnist Richard Sandomir
dubbed NBC's reversal on baseball the "Ebersol dance." Last
summer Ebersol angrily walked away from negotiations for a joint
ABC-NBC baseball network, vowing he wouldn't be involved in the
sport "for the rest of the century." Five months later, there he
was announcing a deal to return baseball to NBC in the 1996
postseason.

There is one thing Ebersol is consistent about: his love for the
Olympics. "It is my passion," he says. His ardor dates back to
the early 1960s when he was a teenager watching ABC's fledgling
attempts to span the globe. In '66 he left Yale temporarily when
Arledge hired him as ABC's first Olympic researcher. Ebersol
took five years to graduate because he kept running off on jobs.
He would schedule classes for Mondays and Tuesdays and fly to
Europe on Wednesdays, returning to campus on Sundays.

Ebersol was Arledge's executive assistant in 1972 when he went
to the Munich Olympics, where he and Arledge worked through the
night of Sept. 4. They were leaving the ABC compound near dawn
when Arledge paused to gaze at the fading full moon. Nearby, a
dark incline led to a chain-link fence, beyond which was the
Olympic Village and the athletes' dormitories. For several
minutes they enjoyed the moonlight while Arledge waxed poetic.
Just before sunrise they got in their car and drove away. Munich
police later told them that hiding in the well of the incline 50
feet from them was the gang of Arab terrorists about to launch
the attack that would result in the deaths of 11 Israeli team
members and a West German policeman. About the time Arledge and
Ebersol pulled away, the terrorists rose out of the dark and
scaled the fence. It was the opinion of local officials that had
Arledge and Ebersol not left before sunrise, they would have
been killed.

Ebersol's knowledge of and love for the Olympics may have been
the ultimate deal-maker. "We have a very high degree of
confidence in our relationship with NBC," Pound says. "If I have
a question, I won't look at the contract. I'll pick up the phone."

Some of Ebersol's rivals at the other networks argue that by
deciding not to open up the TV-rights process to competitive
bidding, as has been the practice in the past, the IOC may have
left some big bucks on the table. Even Pound concedes, "We
traded the dynamics of the marketplace for a certainty." But
Pound also notes that the deal provides for a 50-50 split of
advertising revenues between NBC and the IOC after the network's
rights payments and production costs are met. This means that if
NBC reaps a bonanza, the IOC will share in it.

Whether the agreement is a favorable one for prospective host
cities remains to be seen, but at least their revenue
projections will be stabilized. Beginning in 2004, the local
organizing committee of each Olympics will receive 49% of the
funds paid by NBC for those Games; formerly host organizations
received 60%. But all too often they've been bedeviled by
financial uncertainty. For instance, organizers of the '88 Seoul
Olympics based their bid on the assumption that U.S. television
rights would fetch $500 million; NBC paid only $300 million.
Says Anita DeFrantz of the IOC's executive board, "We were
concerned because in the past we have seen bids that had
unrealistic numbers in regard to U.S. television; the host
cities become disappointed."

For its part, NBC is betting that the Olympics will hold their
current market value--but what if they don't? After the '84 Los
Angeles Games, the sports-marketing industry went into a virtual
depression that all but devastated CBS Sports, which had
committed heavily to premier events. In four, six or eight
years, Ebersol's plan could look like a blueprint for sinking a
network. "We could be in a loss proposition on any one of these
Olympics," Wright says. "Can you hedge against utter disaster?
No."

It will take years to assess the full effect of NBC's
acquisition. But one immediate effect is that Ebersol has
established himself as the most influential executive in the
industry since Arledge. Unlike Arledge, however, it appears
Ebersol will remain in the sports division. He has already had
his adventures in entertainment and news, and he says, "I've
finally figured out what I want to do in life." In 2008 Ebersol
will be 61. He doesn't know where the Games will be that summer,
but he knows he'll be there. "It's a neat bow of closure," he
says. "As long as I'm a grown-up in this business, we'll have
the Olympics."

COLOR PHOTO: CHRISTOPHER LITTLE/OUTLINE [Dick Ebersol sitting in front of NBC logo]

COLOR PHOTO: TODD PLITT/AP Pound (left) has so ably fanned the flame that TV types like Ebersol have gladly sent U.S. rights fees soaring. [Dick Pound and Dick Ebersol lighting fire with torches]

COLOR CHART: PARAGRAPHICS Swifter, Higher, Richer [See caption above--line graph showing Olympics rights fees from 1980 through 2008] COLOR PHOTO: JOHN ABBOTT [Jack Welch]

COLOR PHOTO: PHILLIP GREENBERG [Bob Wright] COLOR PHOTO: PETER MORGAN/REUTER Stern wants to tell the hard-driving Ebersol, "For crissake, go out on a boat or something." [David Stern and Dick Ebersol] COLOR PHOTO: KEN REGAN/CAMERA 5 In the 1970s Arledge was TV's top Gamesman. [Roone Arledge]

COLOR PHOTO: CHRISTOPHER LITTLE/OUTLINE Family fare (from left): Will, Ted, Susan, Charles, Dick. [Susan Saint James and Dick Ebersol with their three children]

SITES UNSEEN

Now that GE's Jack Welch (above, left) and NBC's Bob Wright have
won the rights to the 2004 and 2008 Summer Olympics and the 2006
Winter Games, the question remains: Where will they be held? The
site of the first of those Olympics won't be determined until
September 1997, but here's an early line for 2004--and an even
earlier line on the two Games after that.

2004

ATHENS: Sentiment says yes to the birthplace of the Olympics,
but pollution and a sorry history when it comes to organizing
sports events say no.

BEIJING: Lost out for 2000 Games and may not try again this time
(the deadline for bidders is Jan. 10). Besides, can the IOC be
persuaded to forget Tiananmen Square?

BUENOS AIRES: Came close to landing Games in 1956, when
Melbourne won, but midsummer in the South American city is in
January.

CAPE TOWN: An early favorite because IOC president Juan
Antonio Samaranch wants an Olympics in Africa, but for South
Africans, dealing with social ills may take precedence.

ISTANBUL: Yachting events in the Asian site of Fenerbahce could
make this the first Games planned for two continents, but this
candidacy remains a bit of a turkey.

LILLE: Chunnel trains would transport athletes from
English-speaking Olympic Village in Kent, but who could
transport life into the drabbest city in France?

RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazil would be paddling even deeper in debt
from the cost of the Games.

ROME: Called the strongest bid by Samaranch, but with friends
such as controversial track and field czar Primo Nebiolo,
eternal city needs no enemies.

ST. PETERSBURG: A brown-out in the swimming-pool water during
the 1994 Goodwill Games is among the factors spelling a likely
black-out for the burg.

SAN JUAN: No main stadium, pool or athletes' village, only
lots of beaches. Not on this wave.

SEVILLE: A return to Samaranch's home country so soon after
the Barcelona Olympics? Not likely.

STOCKHOLM: The city that made Jim Thorpe famous in 1912 Games
again a strong candidate.

2006

GRAZ, AUSTRIA: A far ski jump between venues, but gorgeous
Alpine terrain.

MUJU, SOUTH KOREA: Host of the 1997 winter World University
Games has received a favorable review from Samaranch.

OSTERSUND, SWEDEN: Tenth Swedish bid could be a charm unless
Stockholm lands 2004.

2008

BEIJING: Would win gold medal if shooting self in foot were an
Olympic sport, but a good bet assuming 2004 Games go elsewhere
and assuming no new political or steroid scandals.

LYONS: France may forget Lille and make its gastronomic
capital its flag bearer.

BOSTON: Sure the Olympics are on U.S. soil in 1996 and 2002,
but a Games on the East Coast might please NBC. Seattle also a
possibility.

NBCREAMED

Where were ABC and CBS and Fox? NBC's acquisition of the rights
to televise the 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008 Olympics has
left the other networks shocked and embarrassed. ABC Sports,
which once dominated sports--and Olympic--coverage, is a reduced
presence. CBS Sports, already reeling from its baseball losses
of the early '90s and a general malaise at its network, has
suffered another blow. Rupert Murdoch's Fox network, which has
moved aggressively into baseball and the NFL, has seen its
momentum blunted. "Does cardiac arrest say it?" says one rival
executive, who wished to remain anonymous.

But when you've been hit by a surprise attack at dawn, it's your
own fault if you haven't posted a lookout. NBC's competitors are
having a particularly hard time explaining how they could have
been caught flat-footed last week after NBC's first preemptive
strike in August, when Ebersol & Co. secured the rights to the
Sydney and Salt Lake City Games for $1.25 billion. That should
have been ample warning that a free-for-all was in progress.
Still, the other networks responded with a fatal inactivity.

On Dec. 12, senior executives at CBS Sports, whose network had
recently been bought by Westinghouse, were preparing for a press
conference--on college football. ABC and Fox apparently were
simply waiting for an old-fashioned Olympic rights auction for
the 2004 Games that never happened. Before the competition could
finish clearing their throats, NBC already had another $2.3
billion on the table for the 2004, 2006 and 2008 Olympics. "They
didn't give us any warning," CBS Sports senior vice president
Rick Gentile says. "We thought we had earned the right to
compete. It wasn't a level playing field. We were playing by the
rules."

But IOC officials suggest that the other networks simply allowed
themselves to be left in the starting blocks. "All of the TV
people in the U.S. could have said, 'Let's do this,'" says IOC
executive board member Anita DeFrantz. "Nobody else took the
initiative."

The advantages NBC Sports president Dick Ebersol enjoyed over
his rivals in dealing with the IOC included Olympic officials'
familiarity with him and the stability of his network. Referring
to NBC's rivals, IOC television negotiator Dick Pound says, "God
knows what will happen with CBS under Westinghouse. We don't
know the Murdoch people. And [with ABC's parent company, Capital
Cities, about to be merged into Disney] we don't know ABC's
position with regard to the Olympics."

In fact, some industry sources suggest that Ebersol could
not have achieved his Olympic feat without the unwitting help of
some mediocre competition. Says one, "The joke going around is,
'He's doing a great job, but he's playing in the AFC Central.'"

--S.J.