NBC Sports stays course for Olympics amid virus fears
STAMFORD — NBC Sports Group officials said Wednesday that they are moving ahead with their plans to broadcast the summer Olympics from Tokyo, after a senior member of the International Olympic Committee said earlier in the week that the coronavirus outbreak could prompt the games’ cancellation.
The confirmation from the Stamford-based company aligns with comments the same day from the Tokyo organizing committee CEO who said officials in Japan intend to take steps to ensure that the Olympics could safely proceed, as scheduled from July 24 to Aug. 9.
“The safety of our employees is always our top priority, but there is no impact on our preparations at
getaways.
Borelli and other Mallinckrodt employees answered lawyers’ questions under oath ahead of what was expected to be the first federal trial over the toll of opioids. The company ended up settling with the plaintiffs — the Ohio counties of Cuyahoga and Summit. Other major defendants also reached deals.
Another opioid trial is scheduled to begin next month in Central Islip, New York, which has created a renewed push among drugmakers and distributors to settle thousands of opioid-related lawsuits.
Mallinckrodt agreed with lawyers suing on behalf of local governments nationwide to pay its settlement amount over eight years. Most of the money is to go into a fund intended for drug treatment and other programs to aid recovery from an epidemic that has been linked to more than 430,000 deaths in the U.S. since 2000.
The deal is still subject to some negotiations and must be approved by a bankruptcy court. It’s the first proposed opioid settlement that has overwhelming support from the key lawyers for the governments suing to try to hold the drug industry accountable for the crisis. Teva, which now owns Actavis, is negotiating a separate settlement.
In a deposition last year, Douglas Boothe, who was CEO of Actavis in the U.S. and the Americas from 2008 through 2012, was asked about the company’s responsibilities for flagging large and suspicious orders of prescription painkillers.
“I don’t think we had responsibility for, accountability for preventing diversion,” he said. “We had responsibility and accountability for making certain that the orders that we received were valid from licensed pharmacies and were within our suspicious order monitoring thresholds. … Once it goes outside of our chain of custody, we have no capability or responsibility or accountability.“
One of the main destinations for both companies’ opioids was Florida, where so-called pill mills drew people from Appalachia and beyond. One deposition from a Mallinckrodt sales representative says that 47 percent of the company’s high-potency opioids made in 2010 ended up in Florida.
Steve Becker, a former Mallinckrodt salesman who worked for the company from 2000 to 2014, said he wasn’t aware of a system for monitoring suspicious orders. When asked if employees had incentives to report such orders, he said no.
But there were incentives to sell more, Becker said in a 2018 deposition. Employees said they frequently had back orders for pain pills.
“We’re doing our due diligence in selling our product to the various accounts, and we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing, according to the DEA,” Becker said. “When (distributors) then sell their product, it’s their due diligence to know where that product is going.” this time,” NBC Sports said in a statement.
An average of about 2,000 NBC Sports employees have worked on-location during recent summer Olympiads.
As a division of NBC Sports, NBC Olympics has produced every summer games since 1998 and every winter games since 2002. Parent company NBCUniversal owns the U.S. media rights on all platforms to all Olympics through 2032.
Dick Pound, the longest-serving member of the IOC, had estimated Tuesday there were two to three months to make a final decision on holding the games.
“In and around that time, I’d say folks are going to have to ask: ‘Is this under sufficient control that we can be confident about going to Tokyo or not?’” Pound told The Associated Press.
If the IOC were to decide the games could not go forward as scheduled in Tokyo, “you’re probably looking at a cancellation,” he said.
Pound ruled out delaying the Olympics to later in the year. Citing logistical challenges, he indicated that the Olympics probably would not be relocated to another or several other cities.
Despite his warning, Pound encouraged athletes to continue preparing for the games.
About 11,000 athletes are expected to compete in this year’s Olympics. Another 4,400 are set to participate in the Paralympics, which start Aug. 25.
Originating in China about two months ago, coronavirus has infected more than 80,000 people around the world and killed more than 2,700. Japan has reported several deaths from the virus.
Since their 1896 inception, the modern Olympics have been canceled only during wartime. The Olympics in 1940 would have taken place in Tokyo, but World War II led to the abandament of those games.
The most recent summer Olympics, in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, went ahead despite an outbreak of the Zika virus.
NBC Sports’ domestic Olympic production is based at its headquarters, at 1 Blachley Road, on Stamford’s East Side.