By Jacob Feldman
Sports Business Reporter
In the beginning, there was NBC…
Over the last five years, television has seen biblical levels of mergers, spinoffs, acquisitions and would-be deals scuttled. The result has been org charts only Salvador Dalí could admire and confusion for sports fans trying to keep up. Take America’s oldest major broadcasting network, for example.
On Monday, NBC launched NBC Sports Network. Again. The TV channel will initially be available on YouTube TV and soon Xfinity, which sits under the same Comcast umbrella as NBCUniversal. The launch (or relaunch) follows NBC’s recent run of sports rights additions. In 2026, NBCSN will air Big Ten football, NBA and MLB games. The company had none of those rights when NBCSN 1.0 went dark in 2021.
The move makes sense, even if some chuckles could’ve been avoided if NBC chose a new name for the channel. NBC has added a lot of sports to bolster Peacock, the streaming service it launched in 2020. Bringing some of that action, starting with NBA games Monday night, back to cable packages expands their reach for leagues, appeases pay-TV providers, generates some extra revenue to fund the rights buys and hopefully satiates customers who enjoy flipping between channels rather than jumping between apps. YouTube TV in particular sees the value in adding more sports to its service; its new carriage agreement with ESPN opens the door for a sports-specific bundle and will bring ESPN streaming content to the platform.
Games televised on NBCSN will still be available on Peacock. The channel will carry daytime studio programming from the likes of Dan Le Batard and Dan Patrick before airing live events most nights of the year. During the Olympics, NBCSN will be home to Scott Hanson’s Gold Zone whiparound show.
Arguably the biggest properties not represented are NFL games—Sunday Night Football will remain exclusive to NBC proper and Peacock—and the NHL, which served as the core of old NBCSN.
When the NHL jumped to ESPN and TNT Sports, NBC moved the remainder of its cable sports coverage to USA Network. But then NBC decided to spin off USA Network and its other non-Bravo cable channels into a separate company, Versant.
Not so separate, it turns out. Some properties, including NASCAR, the Premier League and the WNBA will continue to span the divide, with some events airing on USA and others on NBC platforms. In August, the USGA announced an extension that would keep the U.S. Open on NBC as well as USA Network through 2032. Some Olympic coverage is also expected to remain on Versant channels in 2026.
Versant has added its own rights too, recently picking up football and basketball games from the Pac-12 (something of a spin-off itself) and elevating League One Volleyball as a weekly cable franchise. USA Sports, including Golf Channel, will have more than 10,000 hours of live event and other sports coverage next year, with an emphasis on women’s sports. Versant’s independence gives it the ability to partner with different streaming services, though head of sports Matt Hong has said he’d like to see USA Sports events also air on Peacock when possible, which somehow makes the most sense and at the same time would be the most confusing result possible. Welcome to the world of media M&A.
The changes are almost entirely positive for the sports industry. More companies mean more competition for valuable rights packages. More channels mean more opportunities for linear exposure for growing leagues and likely a higher production value for fans. Seemingly every channel on television is trending toward being a sports channel.
But don’t take too long studying the ins and outs of who owns what and who airs which games where. The next shake-up is on its way.
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