Twenty-four hours around-the-clock staff in Paris, New York, Connecticut and Los Angeles. A team of 60 people. A barrage of social memes left and right. A steady stream of X (formerly Twitter), Instagram and Facebook posts.
That’s what goes on behind the scenes at NBC Sports, and that’s just for the social media team, for the 2024 Paris Olympics as the Games quickly approaches.
Helping make sure all of that gets done is Justin Karp, a 2007 Arizona State graduate who got his bachelor’s degree in journalism and mass communication and used to be the sports director of the school’s radio station, Blaze Radio (then called The Blaze).
Karp, while working at the Pac-12 Network, was the one who came up with the popular #Pac12AfterDark hashtag, which helped the conference gain a passionate following among college football diehard fans with games on the West Coast going past midnight. The hashtag spawned countless articles.
Now, he’s the vice president of social media for NBC Sports.
“My time at the Pac-12 was fantastic. We got to try a lot of new cool things. We had a lot of really great campaigns,” Karp said. “As a Pac-12 alum, I’m lamenting the demise of the Pac-12 as we knew it. But that was the era of #Pac12AfterDark and all of those things we got to work on, staying up until 1 in the morning watching Wazzu (Washington State) battle UCLA.
“Everywhere I went though, the key to what we try to do is, how do we tell the best story? How do we connect audiences with things they care about? How we made them feel part of a community and connect with each other. The team I was part of tried to connect people to the things they were passionate about and build and grow new audiences. That’s what we’re trying to do at NBC.”
It’s not often that you have the world’s attention as NBC will for the Olympics. At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the International Olympic Committee reported that 3.05 billion people tuned into the Games across TV and digital platforms.
NBC will be broadcasting the Paris Olympics live on TV and streaming it live on Peacock. In an ever-changing media landscape, NBC has taken a multifaceted approach to 2024.
“We want you to be able to turn anywhere and see the Olympics,” Karp said. “Whether it’s in your podcast feed, a push alert, your social feed, your friend texting you. We want you to not be able to go a minute without something crossing your eyes that is related to the Olympics. We will pull every lever as an organization to make that happen.”
There is the “Gold Zone,” which is in the same format as the popular “NFL RedZone.” NFL RedZone features all the games at once with host Scott Hanson showing every touchdown play and the top moments, becoming a favorite among NFL fans. Gold Zone does the same but for Olympic sports. Hanson, alongside Andrew Siciliano, Matt Iseman and Akbar Gbajabiamila, are hosting the Gold Zone for Paris.
NBC has partnered with 27 social content creators from Meta, Overtime, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube for the “Paris Creator Collective.” All 27 creators will be on the ground in Paris to provide content for their platforms. NBC has a talent deal with Alex Cooper, who hosts the most-listened-to podcast in the world by women. iHeartRadio is the exclusive audio partner for NBC at the Olympics. Snoop Dogg is a special correspondent, who made quite the splash when he was at the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials.
“Snoop at the Olympics is going to be – I mean you’ve already seen it at the Track Trials and the content he’s produced,” Karp said. “Snoop’s team has been unbelievable to work with. They are so open to trying new things and collaborating. I can’t say what, but from what I understand, he is going to bring an element to the Olympics and to the viewing experience that I think is going to be so special, lively and unique. You’ve already seen it – him running on the track, the outfits he has created. He genuinely cares. He’s putting everything that he can into this effort.
“Our social goal is finding and developing that new audience that is maybe interacting with the Olympics for the first time. And we owe it to them to be awesome and engaging, and something they feel like they can connect to so they want to come back.”
The preparation for Paris at NBC began the day after the 2022 Bejing Winter Olympics ended.
NBC had to build out a live sports programming schedule for during the day with the time change (Paris is six hours ahead of Connecticut, where NBC is based) as well as focusing on what the primetime coverage stateside looked like, which Karp says has “been reimagined.” They’ve had to focus on the Peacock experience with every Olympic medal event — all 329 of them — being made available on the streaming service.
Karp said it’s hard to put an exact number on it, but it’s probably been a few thousand hours of work spent solely on preparing for the 2024 Paris Olympics across NBC. He usually manages 12 to 14 people, but that team expands to 55 to 60 people for the Olympics.
He will be working from NBC’s headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut with about 25 to 30 people. Karp said there will be 17 people in Paris creating social media content, a first for NBC. “We’ve never done that before at that scale for any Olympics.” The rest will be spread out across New York and Los Angeles with a few people working remotely from home.
During the Paris Olympics, Karp’s day will be 15 hours long as he begins at 9 a.m. and goes through midnight. NBC has people working 24 hours around the clock spread out with daytime and nighttime shifts.
From graphics to video editing, there won’t be an empty desk at NBC until the Closing Ceremony.
“It’s so hard to put in so few words how much time and energy our entire team has put into making these Games the success that they are,” Karp said. “It is going to be an Olympics that people have never seen before with so many platforms and so many different ways. It’s far different from any other Olympic presentation.”
Logan Stanley is a sports reporter with The Arizona Republic who primarily focuses on high school, ASU and Olympic sports. To suggest ideas for human-interest stories and other news, reach out to Stanley at [email protected] or 707-293-7650. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter:@LSscribe.
