updated 9:18 a.m. ET Feb. 26, 2006

NEW YORK - NBC Universal will make a profit of between $50 million and $75 million from the Winter Olympics in Italy despite its ratings troubles, network sports Chairman Dick Ebersol said Monday.

The company hasn’t discussed offering free commercial time to its advertisers, the chief way the television business compensates customers for ratings that don’t meet expectations, Ebersol said.

“It’s the belief of the business side of the company we won’t need to,” Ebersol said on a conference call with reporters.

NBC promised its advertisers that the Turin Games would deliver a prime-time rating of between 12 and 14 (each rating point represents 1,102,000 households). Through Sunday night’s telecast, the average rating stood at 12.1.

Slide show   Emotional Moments Feb. 26: See photos of athletes' highs and lows from Sunday.

NBC will offer women’s figure skating — always the most popular winter Olympics event — this week. But it’s also facing three episodes of “American Idol” and the conclusion of ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars.” Although the Olympics won Sunday night in the ratings overall, it lost head-to-head to ABC’s “Desperate Housewives” and “Grey’s Anatomy.”

With those shows and CBS’ “Survivor,” the Olympics hasn’t really faced such competition before, Ebersol said.

“All those shows have one thing in common — they’re serialized, they’re stories,” he said. “These people build up an attachment, they love these things. Asking them to give it up is a tough thing.”

Slide show   Pictures of the Day Check out Sunday's best Olympic images.

The poor U.S. performance in the games undoubtedly hurts, he said. The first Sunday was particularly tough, with Michelle Kwan dropping out of the Olympics, highly touted skiers Bode Miller and Daron Rahlves doing poorly and Apolo Anton Ohno stumbling in speedskating.

“We’ve lived a lot of successful things,” he said. “It’s our turn to have a tough time. I’m sure the kids on that team feel ... a lot worse about what’s happened to them than any of us have a right to feel about our ratings.”

NBC Sports is a partner in the joint venture that runs NBCSports.com.

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