Actually, I'm surprised the Olympics themselves don't have a direct subscription for streaming the entire event where people can sign up and stream it. I'm under the impression that the event is designed for the PHYSICAL audience first, and streaming it is kind of a poorly though out last minute thing.
NBC (and other networks around the world) pay incredible amounts of money for those rights. And the arrangement makes sense for both parties: NBC can use it to boost viewing figures of their own shows in a way the Olympics couldn't/wouldn't. And they have surfaces to advertise coverage that the Olympics doesn't, or would have to go to considerable lengths to get. So it's a value multiplier for the Olympics to sell it rather than handle it themselves.
In the words of the (NBC) TV Show 30 Rock: "You can't fight synergy, Lemon. It's bigger than all of us"
Image if you could buy the rights to bread, and anyone wanting to sell/buy bread *must* go through you.
I honestly can't fathom how we'd decayed into societies that allows this kind of nonsense.
because the IOC prints money every four years by selling geo-restricted rights in every country in the world.
[0] https://stillmed.olympic.org/media/Document%20Library/Olympi...
NBC tried something similar 30 years ago. It was a financial failure.