The spinoff of ex-Comcast cable networks — Versant — is already looking to assemble its own suite of sports rights.
Versant — the recently-named spinoff of most Comcast cable networks — has held talks with Major League Baseball and the NWSL about potential media rights deals, CEO Mark Lazarus told Alex Sherman of CNBC in a piece published Thursday. Known informally as “Spinco” prior to this week, Versant consists of USA Network, Golf Channel, CNBC and E! — among others — all of which regularly carry NBC Sports programming.
Versant owns rights to a handful of live sports properties thanks to existing rights deals struck as part of its networks’ affiliation with NBC Sports, including NASCAR, the English Premier League, and even the incoming WNBA — whose deal with NBC primarily consists of games on USA Network (Wednesday night doubleheaders, Lazarus told Sherman). Notably, the Olympics is also set to continue airing on the spun off cable channels.
It is led by a sports TV veteran in Lazarus, who previously oversaw Turner Sports, NBC Sports and eventually all of NBCUniversal.
As an active bidder for its own rights deals, Versant joins an increasingly crowded ‘second tier’ of sports rights bidders that also includes Nexstar (CW) and Scripps (ION). The company could also acquire some sports rights from NBC via sublicense, according to a previously noted article in The Hollywood Reporter.
For Major League Baseball, it is hard to see how Versant would make sense as a landing spot — either for the rights deal ESPN opted out of earlier this year, or for a longer-term deal when all of the league’s rights are up for bid in 2028. To begin with, Versant consists solely of linear cable, which MLB commissioner Rob Manfred assailed as a dying platform when he announced ESPN’s exit in February.
If Manfred is open to a new cable partnership, USA Network has traditionally ranked among the cable channels with the greatest distribution — though what that means in 2025 is somewhere around 60 million homes, rather than 80, 90 or certainly 100 million.
