NBC has won the rights to four Olympic Games through 2020 in a deal valued at nearly $4.4 billion.

In the bidding war that concluded Tuesday, Comcast's NBCUniversal beat out Disney's ESPN/ABC and News Corp.'s Fox Sports for the rights to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and the 2018 and 2020 Games, whose host cities have not been selected yet.

In a break with predecessor Dick Ebersol, new NBC Sports chief Mark Lazarus promises to show all events live rather than saving the best for tape-delayed coverage in prime time.

Whether translates into more live TV coverage on NBCUniversal's broadcast and cable channels will be answered next summer when Lazarus and NBC produce the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London.

"We will make every event available, on one platform or another, live," said Lazarus during a conference call with IOC president Jacques Rogge Tuesday.

The three networks submitted sealed bids to the IOC in Lausanne, Switzerland on Tuesday. Fox went first, ESPN went second and NBC went last. Tuesday's drama was the first U.S. media rights auction since Ebersol secured the rights to the 2010 and 2012 Olympics for NBC with a $2.2 billion deal in 2003.

Before the IOC made its official announcement, NBC posted a story declaring itself the winner on its website, NBC Sports.com. Fox issued a statement on Twitter congratulating NBC. ESPN said paying more for the Olympics "would not have made good business sense for us," on a company web site.

Ebersol, NBC's longtime Olympic TV boss, drew criticism over the years for his tape-delay TV strategy at a time when fans were increasingly able to access Olympic results via other TV networks, the Internet and mobile phones. Ebersol resigned last month after losing a power play with Roberts and Steve Burke, his new bosses at Comcast, which recently completed its takeover of NBCUniversal.

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A generation of U.S. TV viewers has grown up watching the Olympics on NBC. The peacock network has broadcast every Summer Olympics since 1988 and every Winter Games since 2002. But with Ebersol out of the picture, many thought the chances of ESPN and Fox had improved. But the loss of Ebersol, who personally oversaw production of 10 Olympics since 1992, apparently did not hurt NBC's chances. Comcast's Roberts and Burke showed they were serious by personally attending the presentation.

At stake were the lucrative TV rights to the 2014 and 2016 Games. But the IOC also gave the networks the green light to bid for the 2018 and 2020 Games. And Comcast and NBC took advantage with a long-term bid. Fox Sports chairman David Hill previously told SportsBusiness Journal he pitched all four Olympic games to try to reduce costs.

The selection of a different network other than NBC would have ended one of the longest marriages in modern TV sports. But NBC lost $223 million on its coverage of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and is expected to lose money on the 2012 London Summer Olympic Games.

Comcast, the nation's largest cable operator, promised to make a more disciplined, financial bid than NBC. CBS chief Leslie Moonves cited financial considerations as the reason his network did not join the other bidders in Switzerland.

"The way we look at it, it's not going to be a cost-effective thing for us," said Moonves at a financial conference last week.