NBCSN is officially back.
NBCUniversal is officially launching a new version of NBC Sports Network — better known as NBCSN — at some point this fall. The news was disclosed as part of an announcement of a new carriage deal between NBCU and Google-owned YouTube TV.
News of a potential relaunch of NBCSN was first broken in July by Joe Flint of The Wall Street Journal, who reported that the new NBCSN would air events that are exclusively streamed on Peacock. Per the July report, the plan is for NBCSN to be available on specialty tiers, allowing it to complement Peacock without cannibalizing the streaming service.
Thursday’s announcement did not go into detail on what NBCSN programming will entail, other than to say it will “complement the prominent sports properties presented year-round on the NBC broadcast network.” It was also not clear whether NBCSN would be available on YouTube TV with a base subscription.
Peacock itself will be available to Google and YouTube subscribers through the company’s “Primetime Channels” feature on YouTube, YouTube TV and Google TV. There is some dispute as to whether that counts as “ingesting” Peacock, as Google desired, but the primetime channels feature generally allows users to watch purchased content within the YouTube platform.
In a scenario where NBCSN is on a YouTube TV base tier and carrying Peacock-exclusive programming, it is hard to see why a sports fan would then need to separately subscribe to Peacock.
The relaunch of NBCSN comes as NBC Sports prepares to carry NBA games for the first time in 23 years. If NBCSN is going to be carrying Peacock programming, any launch would have to come within the next 3 1/2 weeks in order to coincide with the streamer’s first exclusive regular season games on October 27.
In the meantime, the streamer has preseason games the next two Tuesdays — both of which will be full NBC Sports productions (rather than simulcasts of local RSN coverage) — and an exclusive Notre Dame football game on October 11.
The original NBCSN launched in 1995 as the Comcast-owned Outdoor Life Network, which was best known for its annual coverage of the Tour de France. When Comcast acquired NHL rights in 2005, the “OLN” name quickly became incongruous and was changed shortly after to “Versus.” After Comcast merged with NBCUniversal in 2009, Versus was rebranded as NBC Sports Network in 2012.
While NBCSN aired a wide variety of programming — including at the outset a number of original shows, from a Michele Beadle-hosted talk show to multiple daily highlight shows — it was most identified with the NHL.
