With the Summer Olympics in Rio just over 100 days away, NBCUniversal is preparing to roll out a marketing campaign for the event that the Comcast-owned company values at $100 million, reports The Wall Street Journal.

By comparison, NBCU’s marketing around London in 2012 was valued at around $66 million. While the marketing spend might be valued at $100 million, that doesn’t necessarily mean that $100 million in cash is exchanging hands. That figure also includes air time on NBC-owned networks, including NBC, NBC Sports, Telemundo, USA, Oxygen, Bravo and so forth, as well as media buys on NBC’s digital platforms. From now until the Games, NBC expects to air some 7,500 spots across all of the platforms.

The Summer Olympics will start in Rio de Janeiro on Aug. 3, with the Olympic soccer tournament. The Games’ officially open on Aug. 5 and run through Aug. 21.

The Olympics are headed to Brazil during a turbulent time, in which the country has faced an outbreak of the Zika virus, as well as a political scandal and the worst economy in years. But John Miller, chief marketing officer of NBC Olympics, tells the Journal he and his team are working to turn the Games into “an oasis in a sea of bad news.”

Having to market the Games during local crises is relatively common, and there’s frequently negative reporting around the host country’s ability to get all of the venues ready in time for the Games. That run-up drama rarely seems to affect the Games’ ratings however, and NBC doesn’t expect this time around to be any different.

NBC is estimated to have paid $1.2 billion for the U.S. rights to broadcast the Olympic Games as part of an overall broadcast package that NBC acquired in 2011 for $12 billion and runs through 2032. The costs to produce the games are expected to run about $200 million.

While the Olympics has generally been a loss leader — but a brand builder, with the NBC logo tied directly to the Olympic rings in many viewers’ minds — the company is working to make the event profitable, says the WSJ. NBC already has exceeded $1 billion in ad sales for the event, a figure that it didn’t close in on until days before London.

READ MORE: The Wall Street Journal

[Image courtesy of Nic Bothma/European Pressphoto Agency via the Wall Street Journal]

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