NBC Sports recently completed an opening weekend of multiplatform broadcasts in the NFL that averaged a collective 25.9 million viewers. Viewers watched the game through NBC and Peacock, along with NBCUniversal and NFL digital platforms. The cross-platform integration of its sports properties is part of NBCUniversal’s strategy to continue eliciting viewership and appealing to consumers as the dynamic media ecosystem continues to evolve. In an interview with Front Office Sports at the company’s Tuned In event, NBCUniversal Media Group chairman Mark Lazarus explained the derivation of the audience amid overall fragmentation and how over 90% of viewers still emanate from linear television.
The company is coming off strong viewership of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 that averaged 30.7 million viewers across two prime time television windows tailored for Paris, France and the United States. On its last earnings call, the company shared that Peacock had 33 million subscribers, down from the previous quarter, and will release updated numbers the next time it reports its earnings in late October. Lazarus discussed the strength of the NFL, a sports entity with which Comcast, parent company of NBCUniversal, is in the second season of a 10-year deal.
“If you look at our last two major rights deals – the Big Ten and NBA – they were centered around broadcast and streaming vocations, and we think that that’s the differentiator for us,” Lazarus said. “We have a strong streamer, we have a very strong growth reach vehicle and NBC [to] market together.”
Comcast’s NBCUniversal subsidiary agreed to an 11-year media rights deal with the NBA that will commence in the 2025-26 season. Under the new contract, the company will distribute up to 100 NBA regular-season contests per league year that will air on linear television and/or the Peacock streaming platform. The company will air six Conference Finals series over the 11-year deal, along with the NBA All-Star Game and other events surrounding the weekend. The new media rights deal marks the return of the NBA on NBC broadcast property, which ceased NBA telecasts after losing rights to the league in 2002.
“We were always interested in the NBA,” Lazarus said. “We, earlier in the year, expressed our interest to the league that should they get out of their exclusive window, we’d love to have a conversation. When they got out of their exclusive window, we went hard and sat on executing the strategy of that kind of thing.”
In considering making a bid for the NBA, NBCUniversal acknowledged that it can help its prime-time television broadcast windows, promote heavy usage of Peacock and bring a culturally relevant, appealing sport to its platforms. Yet ratings for the previous NBA Finals between the Boston Celtics and Dallas Mavericks were down year-over-year, but the reported fee for the media rights increased as a whole. NBCUniversal is reportedly paying the league $2.45 billion per year for its package of games, which also includes broadcasts within the WNBA and USA Basketball.
“They’re worth what anyone’s willing to pay for it,” Lazarus said regarding the media rights. “First of all, we’ve been saying for 25 years or 30 years, as long as I’ve been kind of doing these kinds of roles, that the market is about to burst, and it still hasn’t burst. I wish it would, but it hasn’t.
“We have a plan – we know exactly what we pay, and we know how we’re going to get that to that – and we have a rationale for why that makes sense for us. The amount of programming it replaces on NBC, our budgets for Peacock, our ability to work with distributors and affiliates, so we have a plan on why this makes sense for us, and we look forward to getting it.”
Lazarus, who was part of the team that hired Charles Barkley at TNT Sports in 2000, expressed that NBCUniversal would be interested in having a conversation with him should he become available. Barkley and TNT Sports recently reaffirmed a long-term commitment that is expected to continue beyond the 2024-25 NBA season, the final under which parent company Warner Bros. Discovery has rights to the NBA. The award-winning studio program Inside the NBA and TNT Sports as a whole was slated to be part of Venu Sports, a joint streaming venture with The Walt Disney Company and FOX Corporation; however, a preliminary injunction within a lawsuit from FuboTV has blocked the launch of the service.
“It’s an incomplete service in that it doesn’t have all sports,” Lazarus said. “It has three company sports, but that leaves out us and Paramount and Amazon, who [have] major sports portfolios or growing sports portfolios, and multitudes of other places that sports come in, so that the consumer will have to decide, from our point of view.”
