Hottest Olympic Event: Wrestling for TV Rights

The escalating fight over TV sports rights reaches its biggest battlefield next week, as NBCUniversal pushes to extend its track record of Olympic broadcasting wins, and ESPN and Fox aim to spoil it.

On June 6 and 7, the TV broadcasters will bid for exclusive U.S. television rights for the 2014 and 2016 Olympic Games, one of the few spectacles guaranteed to draw big, live TV audiences at a time when consumers are spreading their attention across a growing number of TV channels and online video sites. The bidding, which is expected to be tighter than in years' past, also marks an effort by the International Olympic Committee and its TV broadcasters to find a way to make televising the Games profitable again. The old model of focusing coverage on one flagship broadcast channel has been broken by the steep increases in rights fees, which have risen faster than advertising rates. The media companies are each sending fleets of executives to Switzerland to make their pitches. And each is taking a different approach.