NBC Tried to Change Olympics' Official Language in Bid for Bigger Ratings
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NBC, which paid about $1.2 billion to broadcast the Olympics, is so keen to maximize the audience for Rio 2016’s opening ceremony that it lobbied — unsuccessfully — to change the spectacle’s official language from Brazil’s native Portuguese to English.
In the traditional Parade of Nations, teams enter the arena in alphabetical order. Switching the languages would have put the United States’s 555 athletes near the back, giving American audiences a reason to watch the full broadcast. As it is, the team will enter somewhere in the middle, because in Portuguese, the delegation is known as “Estados Unidos.”
Communications director Mario Andrada told the Americans yesterday that International Olympic Committee rules require that the official language of the opening ceremony has to be that of the host country.
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