NBCUniversal has announced that the Olympic Channel, that launched in 2017, will go dark on September 30.
The network, who only briefly had an opportunity to showcase live Olympic coverage in 2021 with the Tokyo Games, mainly aired older contests and shows about Olympic athletes.
“In order to best reach our target audiences, we are reevaluating our programming distribution strategy regarding the content that currently airs on Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA with our partners at the IOC and USOPC,” an NBC Sports spokesperson said in a statement. “We will be announcing our exciting new plans for Olympic content in the fall.”
The Olympic Channel rebranded NBCU’s Universal HD channel. The channel was part of a deal between NBCUniversal and the international and U.S. Olympic committees. NBCU still owns the United States media rights of the Olympics through 2032.
The closure of the Olympic Channel follows a similar path as the shuttering of former channel-mate NBC Sports Network. That network went dark last year. NBCUniversal has been sending their NBCSN programming to USA Network and their streaming service Peacock. Just this week, NBCUniversal announced that Peacock had hit $1 billion in ad revenue.
NBCUniversal has not indicated where Olympic Channel programming will be found in the future.
