The new NBCSN is launching next week.
NBCUniversal announced early Thursday that it is relaunching its NBCSN cable network on Monday and unveiled a programming lineup that will include a mix of Peacock-exclusive events — including the streamer’s new Monday night NBA package — and NBC broadcast network staples.
In particular, NBCSN is expected to carry regular season and playoff games from the NBA, WNBA, and Major League Baseball — with the announcement citing a “soon-to-be-announced agreement” with MLB — plus college football and basketball, major golf, English Premier League, Tour de France, Kentucky Derby, “Gold Zone” and daily shows like “The Dan Patrick Show,” “The Dan LeBatard Show” and “PFT Live.”
(The announcement gave a hint at the size of NBC’s looming MLB agreement, with NBCSN set to carry “dozens” of regular season games and some in the postseason.)
It will not include Peacock’s exclusive NFL games or the Olympics, NBC Sports president Rick Cordella said on the Sports Media Watch Podcast last month.
The channel will be available on YouTube TV first, with a launch on corporate sibling Xfinity coming “soon.” Additional distributors are expected.
Cordella said on the SMW Podcast that the idea to relaunch NBCSN came after a YouTube executive expressed interest in licensing Peacock content as part of upcoming carriage negotiations. “And so I kind of went back and started thinking, we’ve had this point of view of ‘grow Peacock,’ and that content has to be exclusively on Peacock to grow the subs. But if we’re able to amortize the cost of our content, and we became agnostic to how people consumed it, whether it be through the traditional pay TV ecosystem or through Peacock and DTC, as long as we’re getting paid appropriately for it, why would we care?”
In a statement Thursday, NBCUniversal president of platform distribution and partnerships Matt Schnaars said the new channel would benefit fans and distributors “who prefer an aggregated experience” (e.g. linear cable) and create “a new monetization path” for NBC Sports programming. He added that the new channel supports “NBCU’s commitment to serving viewers wherever they watch, whether on Peacock, pay-tv, or both.”
The original NBCSN launched in 1995 as the Comcast-owned Outdoor Life Network, which was known primarily for its coverage of the Tour de France. Its acquisition of rights to the indoor NHL in 2005 necessitated a relaunch as Versus the following year, and Comcast’s acquisition of NBCUniversal in 2009 led to the rebranding as NBC Sports Network.
After NBCSN shuttered in 2021, NBC moved most of its sports programming to USA Network, which became a corporate sibling of NBC in the 2004 merger that created NBCUniversal. But USA is now being spun off into a new venture called Versant and becoming an independent sports broadcasting brand under the banner USA Sports.
