• by Wayne Friedman , April 22, 2014

On top of an already solid first quarter for NBCUniversal with a big Sochi Winter Olympics, ad revenue take yielded soaring overall financial results.

NBCUniversal results grew 29% to $6.9 billion for the Comcast Corp-owned company. Even without the Olympics, the NBC Television Network witnessed 17% growth in revenue to $1.8 billion. Including the Olympics in its results, the broadcast network posted a 73% increase to $2.6 billion.

Taking out the Olympics, the company says there were higher overall program ratings during the period at NBC, as well as a 16% gain in advertising revenue, higher retransmission fees for its stations, and more content licensing revenues.

NBCUniversal’s cable networks continued to show revenue growth -- 13% higher to $2.5 billion, including $257 million in advertising revenue from the Sochi Games. Taking out the Olympics, cable network revenues inched up just 1%, with advertising revenue slipping 1.4% during the period. Cable network subscriber fees climbed 4.4%.

Comcast says the Sochi Olympics pulled in a total overall $1.1 billion in advertising revenue. Although it did not reveal more details, such as operations costs, Comcast had previously voiced confidence about the games' profitability. The company paid $775 million in rights for the games.

For its cable operations, Comcast continued to offer Wall Street a bit of a surprise -- adding 24,000 net video subscribers from the fourth quarter 2013. It was the second consecutive quarterly gain during the period. Analysts were expecting a 26,000 net loss. Comcast now totals 22.6 million video customers.

Comcast, which made a $45.3 billion bid to acquire the second-largest U.S. cable operator Time Warner Cable in February, said it had $17 million in costs related to the acquisition in the quarter.

Revenue from video subscribers grew 1.3% to $5.2 billion, with broadband revenue 9% higher to 2.7 billion and the voice/phone business adding 2.1% to 920 million.

Overall for Comcast Corp, net income improved 15% to $1.9 billion, with quarterly revenue up 14% to $17.4 billion.