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.

NBC promised its advertisers 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.

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.”