After paying a record $963 million for the rights to the 2018 Winter Olympic Games, NBC has some revenue to catch up on. Over the next two weeks, NBC has asked its Olympic partners to cleverly disguise their advertisements as Olympic coverage in order to keep their audience engaged. By doing this, they hope that no one will notice how much they actually cover the Olympics compared to the number of ads they show.  However, this strategy has perplexed some of its viewers.

“Sometimes I would get confused about what I was watching,” said longtime Olympic viewer, 74-year-old Jeffrey Wilson of Tacoma, WA. “One second I’m watching curling, and the next I’m watching some of the American athletes shopping at picturesque alpine ski shops. I thought NBC was doing a fantastic job at bringing the audience to the Olympic village, but then after viewing the same interview for the third or fourth time, I realized it wasn’t an interview at all, but a VISA ad!”

As the games continue on, it appears that some viewers have become so used to the ads that the actual Olympics irritated them.

“The games themselves are just not as cinematically engaging,” another viewer said. “There is not enough character development, unlike that heart-wrenching Folgers commercial.” 

It seems that NBC has been so successful at disguising the Olympics as an advertisement, that the Olympics are dull in comparison. As one fan from Georgia put it: “I appreciate that NBC plays the Olympic theme before they get back to their coverage. That way, I know I can use the bathroom without missing any of the commercials.”

In the future, NBC said they don’t plan on bidding for the Olympics and instead plan on airing commercials that mimic Olympic games.

“It’ll save us a lot of money and no one will be able to tell the difference,” said NBC chairman Robert Greenblatt.