In some ways, NBC Sports resembles the 2000-02 Los Angeles Lakers — there’s Shaq (the NFL), there’s Kobe (the Olympics) and there’s not much else.
| State of NBC (2010) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Good: | Sunday Night Football draws numbers on par with championship sporting events; the Olympic Games every two years; clinching game of Stanley Cup Final hits 36-year high in back-to-back years | |||
| The Bad: | Very thin line-up outside of the NFL and the Olympics | |||
On a weekly basis, NBC has the least impressive afternoon sports line-up of any of the big four networks. Virtually year round, the network’s weekend schedule is littered with a variety of obscure events that fail to draw even a 1.0 rating. NBC would be in even worse position than ABC, which at least has NBA and college football games on each week, if not for two major events — the NFL and the Olympic Games.
NBC’s Sunday Night Football draws numbers on par with the NBA Finals and the World Series — and that’s no exaggeration: during the 2009-10 season, SNF averaged an 11.7 rating and 19.4 million viewers, identical to the World Series (11.7, 19.4 mil) and higher than the NBA Finals (10.6, 18.1 mil).
For the full season, SNF averaged a 7.5 rating in the all-important adults 18-49 demographic — again, higher than the NBA Finals (7.3) and the World Series (6.2). During the September-May television season, it averaged a 7.2 rating, the highest average in the demographic for any non-American Idol primetime program.
NBC has another ace up its sleeve, in the form of the Olympic games. NBC has at least one more Olympics left (2012), with the rights to the 2014 and 2016 Olympics currently up for grabs. While the Olympics is not a yearly event, it does give NBC as strong a two weeks in primetime as just about anything else in sports.
Of course, this means that NBC is extremely top heavy. Outside of the NFL and the Olympics, the network’s biggest draw is arguably the NHL, and though the league’s fortunes have improved dramatically over the past three years — with the clinching game of the Stanley Cup Final hitting a 30+ year high in viewership in back-to-back years — it remains a distant fourth among the major sports in television ratings.
Additionally, big numbers have not necessarily translated into financial success. NBC lost $223 million on the 2010 Winter Olympics, owing mainly to the $820 million rights fee the network paid for the event.
One major wild card for NBC in the future is the impending takeover of Comcast. The cable giant’s deal to take a majority stake in NBC Universal is still under review by the Federal Communications Commission. Assuming it is approved, the deal would put NBC and cable sports network Versus under the same corporate umbrella.
Such a deal would essentially give NBC Sports its own cable outlet, not unlike ABC and ESPN (although that relationship has flipped to the point where ABC is ESPN’s broadcast arm, not the other way around). The implications for Versus are conceivably larger than for NBC, as the cable net’s standing could improve dramatically with the backing of the NBC Sports brand.
That said, there will be no migration of sporting events from NBC to Versus — ala ESPN/ABC — at least not immediately. In June, Comcast assured NBC affiliates that it would not “move sports events like National Football League games and the major Olympic events from (free) NBC onto (pay) cable.”
It remains to be seen what effect the Comcast deal will have on NBC Sports. With the caveat that events like the NCAA Tournament (through 2024), the NBA (through 2016), the Bowl Championship Series (through 2014) and Major League Baseball (through 2013) are not going to be available for several years, NBC — armed with a cable outlet that could help defray costs of expensive TV rights deals — could become a player for some of the sports it deemed too expensive years ago.
See Also: NBC Posts $223 Million Loss on Winter Olympics (CBS), Comcast Pledges Good-Faith Talk With TV Affiliates (Business Week)
