NBC Sports honcho irked staffers after ‘tone deaf’ claim about 'dumpster fire' Beijing Olympics, insider says

Fox News' Gillian Turner has more as consumers take issue with brands supporting the 2022 Winter Olympics.

Peacock Network staffers are stunned that the NBC Sports chairman claimed the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics was "probably the most difficult" games ever in a "tone-deaf" comment that downplayed the 1972 Munich massacre, according to a well-placed NBC insider. 

The Wall Street Journal reported that NBC’s primetime coverage of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games drew the smallest audience since NBCUniversal began airing the event, an average of 11.4 million primetime viewers over more than two weeks, for a staggering 42% drop compared to the previous low in 2018. In the report, NBC Sports Chairman Pete Bevacqua evoked issues such as mask-wearing, family members of athletes being unable to attend and other stringent COVID protocols. 

"This was probably the most difficult Olympics of all time," Bevacqua told the Journal this week when attempting to justify the disappointing viewership. 

Peacock Network staffers were taken aback that the network’s chairman claimed the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics was "probably the most difficult" games of all time in a "tone deaf" comment that downplayed the 1972 Munich massacre, according to a well-placed NBC insider.  (Getty images)

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Bevacqua’s comment "shocked" NBC staffers, who called it "tone deaf," according to the NBC insider. 

"The families of the 11 Israeli Olympic team members who were murdered in Munich in 1972 would like a word," the NBC insider told Fox News Digital.

Indeed, the Munich massacre at the 1972 Olympic Games traumatized the world after the massacre of Israeli