It seems like the only way to watch the Olympic games live on television this summer was on NBC website. Of the 3,600 hours of coverage planned 2,200 hours of live television from the Beijing Summer Olympic Games were broadcast online on NBCOlympics.com. All for free and of course with advertising on the site which is the main source of revenue for the company. NBC reportedly paid $894 millions for the rights to broadcast this year’s Olympic games. The network sold more than $1 billion worth of advertising on NBC, Telemundo and other NBC Universal networks.

That means for the non-rights holders like ESPN, the worldwide leader in sports, the coverage rights for the Olympic games is very limited. Each day, ESPN can only air event highlights after NBC’s prime-time coverage ended and no more than six minutes on other news channels. NBC would have 2,900 workers on hand, including 106 announcers and 1,000 local hires while everybody else is locked out and have no choice but to work in Beijing’s backstreets. They cannot bring on the competition sites any recording devices including cameras in the mixed zones where the media members interview the athletes.  That’s why ESPN only deployed eight staffers in Beijing.

Below is ‘kinda’ the advertising campaign sent to the Olympic organizers to thank (not really!) them for their limited coverage.