updated 8:53 p.m. ET March 25, 2009

DENVER - The chairman of NBC Sports gave a lighthearted nod to the delicacy of the Olympic revenue-sharing flare-up while conceding he’d like to see the U.S. Olympic Committee make some accommodation to end the disagreement.

“I’m hoping someone will provide me with an arm to escort me out of the building,” Dick Ebersol said Wednesday after his Q&A session at the SportAccord conference in front of hundreds from the Olympic family.

NBC and its parent company, General Electric, is the biggest money player in the dispute, providing the biggest chunk of cash to the International Olympic Committee in the form of both TV rights and sponsorship.

The IOC wants the USOC to take a smaller share of the money and has upped the rhetoric this week. A group of Olympic sports leaders passed a motion to terminate the revenue-sharing contract Tuesday and presented the proposal to IOC leaders Wednesday.

Urs Lacotte, director general of the IOC, confirmed the motion had been received, but declined comment, saying president Jacques Rogge would address the topic at his news conference Friday.

USOC officials said they had constructive conversations with the IOC on Wednesday.

NBC has been silent on the dispute, but Ebersol’s appearance at SportAccord offered a chance for him to take questions.

“We’re in a unique place because we’re a source of a slight majority of the TV money,” Ebersol said. “And I’d be the first to acknowledge that on the sponsorship side, we do business all over the world. There should be some form of accommodation.”

NBC paid more than double the European TV partners to televise the Beijing Games. American companies account for the majority of the sponsorship money, too, but one of the IOC arguments is that those companies have significant presences outside the United States and shouldn’t be viewed as strictly American.

Ebersol was asked if he thought the dispute and the recent turnover in the USOC leadership, coming during a key lead-up time in Chicago’s quest to host the 2016 Olympics, might have a negative impact on the bid.

Chicago, Madrid, Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro give presentations to the IOC on Thursday.

“I can’t believe, having understood the process, that in the final analysis that will have a major role,” Ebersol said. “But I hope very much that an accommodation can be made between the USOC and the IOC.”

Ebersol also said he thought the IOC’s recent decision to delay bidding for the American TV rights for 2016 until after the Games are awarded was more of an overall economic decision than an effort to steer the IOC toward Chicago.

Lacotte said no specific date had been set for the bidding.

“Some people think the delay is based purely on American companies wanting Chicago to win badly,” he said. “We’re American media companies, so of course we want them to win badly. But there’s value in the Olympics no matter where they are.”

Ebersol said there would be no move to change starting times of some events at the 2012 Olympics in London.

“Absolutely not,” he said, acknowledging the impossibility of holding events at 1 a.m. for them to be shown in prime time in America.

He credited the decision to move swimming and some gymnastics to the morning in Beijing as part of the reason for NBC’s good ratings in Beijing.

The idea first came up in a brief conversation with Rogge, soon after he became president in 2001.

“I told him that I couldn’t bring any money to what I was bringing up because we were already in the TV deals,” Ebersol said. “But I said, ’I want to tell you, I believe very strongly it’ll be tough to get any American media company excited about games in the Pacific Rim without the ability to bring the games back to the U.S. in prime time.”’

Ebersol said he wasn’t involved in the negotiations over the next several years but over time, the idea took hold.

NBC is preparing to televise its sixth straight Olympics. Ebersol named Lindsey Vonn, Apolo Anton Ohno, Shani Davis and Shaun White as athletes to watch. He responded to recent comments from Bode Miller, in which the skier sounded noncommittal about competing in Vancouver.

“He’s the greatest American alpine skier of all time,” Ebersol said. “But if he continues to find the Olympics are not his cup of tea, I’d strongly suggest he stay at home and watch them on NBC.”

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