• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, June 7, 2011

After years of speculation about which network would land Olympic rights, it's finally in the hands of the decision-makers in Switzerland. All three competitors have submitted bids with how much they are willing to spend to land the Games.  

Fox is the only net to acknowledge that it has taken advantage of the International Olympic Committee's offer to acquire the Games through 2020.

A decision is expected about whether the 2014 and 2016 events will go to Fox, ESPN or Comcast at around midday Eastern time on Tuesday.

Fox said it would make two offers: one for just the 2014 Winter Games (Sochi, Russia) and 2016 Summer Games (Rio de Janeiro), while making a separate one for a 2014, 2106, 2018 and 2020 combined package.

The move carries some risk, in that the locales of the 2018 and 2020 events are unknown. They could take place in areas with vast time differences with the U.S., limiting live programming in coveted time periods.

Neither ESPN or Comcast's NBCU would comment on how many Games they bid for.

Perhaps showing how much the International Olympic Committee is eager for a programmer with vast promotional and marketing muscle, Fox Sports Senior Vice President of Communications Lou D'ermilio joined the Fox delegation in the presentation room. At ESPN, Vice President of Communications Mike Soltys did, too. Chris McCloskey, NBCU vice president of communications, did not join the group.

If any of the three companies acquire rights to the 2014-2020 package, they could use that as leverage in negotiating long-term carriage deals with cable, satellite and telco TV providers.

In its presentation Monday, Fox Sports chairman David Hill closed with a tribute to NBC Sports' Dick Ebersol, considered a paragon of the Olympic movement, as he led NBC's coverage for years before his recent departure.

The Fox bid came after Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of parent News Corp., said in September 2009 that the company probably would not make a bid because the Games were not a moneymaker. Indeed, NBC lost money on the Vancouver event in 2010, which took place in a time zone favorable to U.S. TV.

ESPN has been focused on a bid for some time. In fact, it may have dropped out of the bidding for rights to the NCAA basketball tournament to save money for the Olympics.

How Comcast fares could be telling. On the one hand, its NBC brand is largely affiliated with the Olympics. On the other, the company is said to be a bit tighter with the purse strings than some other media entities.

All three companies would air the Games across a slew of properties, broadcast (ABC, Fox, NBC) and cable networks.