Early attempts at filming Olympic games competitions began in the 1930s, but the technology of the time made the process unwieldy and prohibitively expensive. Things improved by the 1964 Olympics in Japan, when NBC, covering the event, no longer had to run tapes across the Pacific, relying instead of their newly-launched Syncom 3 satellite. By the 1980s Olympic games coverage started becoming an entire franchise for the network.

On this day, July 27, in 1993, NBC won the bid for covering the 1996 Summer Olympic games in Atlanta.

From a bid of about $400 million to keep the Olympic games on NBC in 1992, the network paid over $5 billion to lock in rights through the entire first decade of the 21st century. Although the ‘92 games lost the network around $100 million when their ill-fated attempt at offering some events via pay-per-view failed, NBC calculated the prestige that comes with carrying the games justifies the cost.