• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, June 7, 2011

With questions swirling whether Comcast would spend aggressively to keep the Olympics in the NBCUniversal family, the company topped two competitors in landing the Games through 2020. Comcast's winning bid of $4.38 billion includes two Games, where the sites are undetermined, possibly affecting their value.

The company, which took control of NBCU this year, acquired rights to the 2014 Winter Games (Sochi, Russia) and 2016 Summer Games (Rio de Janeiro), but also the 2018 and 2020 events, with no locales yet.

Fox had also offered a bid covering the four Games. ESPN was only willing to acquire the 2014 and 2016 rights with questions about the future sites. Time differences can affect the ratings -- and the fate of the economy.

The International Olympic Committee was accepting bids for just 2014 and 2016, as well as the four-event package.

NBCU has the Summer Games next summer in London under a previous deal. The Comcast victory comes after NBCU's longtime Olympics guru Dick Ebersol left the company recently.

"The vision for our new Comcast-NBCUniversal was to create new platforms and technologies to distribute the very best content," stated Comcast CEO Brian Roberts. "Every two years, the Olympic Games provides iconic content for us to deliver on all platforms."

ESPN head of content John Skipper recently told investors that the company would be judicious in spending for increasingly pricey sports rights. Its desire to keep "Monday Night Football," the NBA and to expand college sports may have impacted its approach.

"We made a disciplined bid that would have brought tremendous value to the Olympics and would have been profitable for our company," ESPN stated. "To go any further would not have made good business sense for us."

Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker wrote in a note that with NBCU having lost more than $200 million on the 2010 Vancouver Games and the potential for the London Games to show a loss, Comcast may not have been thinking entirely about the bottom line.

"At this point, we continue to see the Olympics as less of a financial decision and more of a strategic and branding initiative," she wrote. "Time will tell."

Still, with the win NBCU affiliates should be thrilled and Comcast has an opportunity to increase distribution of its Versus network. that could affect their value.