Behind NBCUniversal’s Creator Blitz at the Winter Olympics

At some point during NBC’s presentation of the 2026 Winter Olympics, Snoop Dogg and Stanley Tucci will rendezvous on the side of an Italian highway. NBC is playing coy about what the pair will be doing (expect delicious food to be involved), but Molly Solomon, the executive producer and president of NBC Olympics production, promises “it will be memorable.”

The stunt, which will feature two of NBC’s celebrity correspondents for the Milan-Cortina Olympics, is a textbook example of a strategy that the company piloted in Paris, but that it will double down for in Milan (and Los Angeles, come 2028): Betting that high-wattage celebrities, TikTok and YouTube stars, and a plan to turn athletes into social media sensations, can drive viewer interest in an event that is still, at its core, about amateur sports.

“I think what we realized is that you’ve gotta have moments that stand out, that galvanize the social algorithm, and that comes not only from athletic performance, but from connecting the celebrities to the athletes,” Solomon tells The Hollywood Reporter of NBC’s learnings from the Paris 2024 games.

And Snoop Dogg, whose participation led to many viral moments, is once again at the center of it, exploring the region, making appearances on NBC shows, and cheering on from the crowd. Tucci, meanwhile, will be a special correspondent, highlighting the food and culture of northern Italy in what Solomon describes as a “nightly postcard.”

“Snoop was able to elevate their [the athletes] profile by being with them and showcasing them,” Solomon says. “So the first thing we thought about coming out of Paris is, how do we do this even better? We never want to put a shadow over the athletes, we actually want to amplify what they’re doing and that’s why Snoop works.”

Snoop’s success underscores the effort that NBC has put into leveraging celebrities to generate interest in the games, and the athletes that participate in them. NFL and NBA stars are household names in a way that Olympic athletes mostly aren’t, so the logic is a strategic one.

“Celebrities expand the tent,” says Jenny Storms, the CMO for TV and streaming at NBCUniversal. “They bring the casual fan fans in, but they also help introduce these athlete’s stories to the American public, and a lot of these athletes are still relatively unknown as they walk into these winter games.”

That has meant an extended marketing campaign featuring stars like Ray Romano, Sebastian Maniscalco, Dua Lipa, Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, Glen Powell, Scarlett Johansson, culminating with a spot starring Odyssey lead Matt Damon. And it means those celebrity correspondents will be roaming the Italian countryside, eager to create a viral moment. Tucci, Solomon says, “thinks like a producer,” and has already mapped out a plan.

And it also means taking those relatively unknown stars and turning them into social media sensations.

Last year, NBC took a busfull of Olympic hopefuls to TikTok’s Los Angeles headquarters. The goal was to connect the athletes to the platform, betting that as they post content, fans will tune in.

It’s all part of a quiet effort to help athletes develop and grow their personal social platforms, betting that as they gather fans on Instagram or TikTok, those fans will want to watch them during the games. Olympics athletes, with rare exceptions like the basketball teams or hockey teams, or a Michael Phelps or Shaun White, are amateurs. They are not household names.

“The biggest thing was hesitation and fear. It was a worry around, ‘I don’t want to do something wrong, I don’t want to post something that then gets me in trouble.’ Social was just a bit scary,” Storms says of the effort. “There was trepidation around it, and that’s when an unlock happened in our heads, and we said, Hold on, we’re literally doing this every single day, all day long … we can help them.”

The company began to test the thesis in Paris, where sprinter Noah Lyles emerged as a case study.

“He loves to post about fashion, very fashionable guy, and he loves to post about track and field,” Storms says. “We brought into the meeting a heat map that showed him the time of day of when people are on social media that are interacting with fashion, and when are people on social media interacting with sports and things like track and field. He started posting pieces according to the heat map, and he saw an immediate jump in his engagement, a demonstrative change. So all of a sudden it was like an unlock to say, ‘whoa, I get this.’”

Social media in general has become a focal point for NBC, a recognition of changing consumer habits. While the company is working to turn athletes into social creators, it is simultaneously taking social creators and giving them access to the athletes.

After piloting the program in Paris, the company is bringing what it calls its “Creator Collective” to Milan, taking creators from YouTube, TikTok and Meta and bringing them to Italy with what it says is “unprecedented access to the athletes and competitions.”

“The premise of that idea was, how do we talk to different audiences and bring them into the Olympic movement,” says Peter Lazarus, executive VP of sports and Olympics ad sales and partnerships. “When we had to change the way we approached the Olympics, that meant changing the way we talk to audiences, and talking to the younger audiences on their platforms, in their language, whether it be on Tiktok or Snap or X or whatever the platform is, and doing it in the right way, with the right voice, with the right influencers and creators telling that story made the Olympic content much more attractive and much more digestible to that audience.”

For Milan, the company is bringing over talent like Kylie Kelce, Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers, Jordan Howlett and Cleo Abram from YouTube; Rylee Arnold, the Hulett Brothers and Carlo & Sarah from Meta; And Ashley Yi, Mariah Rose and Molly Carlson from TikTok.

“We see this kind of flywheel where people are consuming on social, getting more interested in coming back to TV, and vice versa,” Lazarus says. “We believe that the content creators really do a great job at talking the right language, making it feel official, with behind the scenes access, and that’s what we give them. We give them access to whether it’s athletes, whether it’s sets, whether it’s behind the scenes… we help get them the access so that they can take a unique picture and create those viral moments and hopefully then promote to our broadcast on the backside of it.”

It’s become a business opportunity as well. As with the athletes that NBC works with, the company also connects Olympics TV advertisers to creators, giving them potential sponsorships around the games.

The goal, ultimately, is that most elusive thing: Buzz.

And while Milan may not be w replay of Paris (the Winter Olympics are never quite as popular as the summer games), executives at the company think they have a gameplan that can capitalize on it.

“Celebrities showed up in Paris, they were in the audience,” Solomon says, noting that Tom Cruise sat in the audience to watch Simone Biles compete. “It just signifies cultural importance and cultural relevance. Some of that just happened because it was Paris, and other times, you know, we helped make that happen.”