NBCUniversal leans into sports ahead of ‘Legendary February’
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NBC is about to have itself a “legendary” month.
“Legendary February,” a marketing tagline invented by NBC Chief Marketing Officer Jenny Storms, is all about the sports that will be aired by NBCUniversal, the subsidiary of Comcast. The Milano Cortina Winter Olympics begin Feb. 6 with the opening ceremonies. That will air on NBC, followed by a two-week slew of Olympics programming.
Just two days after the Olympics coverage starts up, NBC will air the Super Bowl, and, a week later, the network has the NBA All-Star game, a product of the new NBA media rights deal that began this season. The Olympics ends on Feb. 22, and NBC won’t just air the closing ceremonies — it also has the Boston Celtics vs. the Los Angeles Lakers that night.
All of the marquee events will air on NBC and on its subscription streaming service, Peacock.
This doesn’t even include the FIFA World Cup, which will air on NBCU’s Telemundo this summer, or Major League Baseball, which returns to NBC in March after a three-year hiatus.
The run of premier sports events will be a major test for NBC after it spent billions of dollars to acquire rights to air them. The return on the investment is judged by a mixture of advertising revenue sold against the events, plus the added distribution value by making NBC a must-have component of any pay-TV bundle, plus the value these events have for its streaming service Peacock in terms of adding and holding monthly subscribers.
The month of February is a microcosm of the company’s strategy these days — and a notable turn for the media company in recent years. While Comcast co-CEO Mike Cavanagh says he disagrees, it’s hard to argue otherwise: NBC has become a sports-first entity.
NBC’s evolution
Sports has been a major component of NBC for decades, but it didn’t use to be the network’s calling card. In the 1990s, NBC stood for “Must See TV,” anchored by hits “Seinfeld,” “Friends,” “Frasier” and “ER.”
That run bled into the early 2000s, with another string of hits led by “The Office,” “The West Wing,” “Friday Night Lights” and “This is Us,” along with critical darlings such as “30 Rock,” “Parks and Recreation,” “Community” and “The Good Place.”
NBC has also always had successful morning shows (“Today”), news programming and late night shows (“Saturday Night Live,” “The Tonight Show”), but ratings have come down for all of those entities as tens of millions of Americans have canceled traditional pay TV during the past 15 years.
The massive cord cutting has, of course, led to a significant change in the business of media. With ownership of Warner Bros. Discovery still in limbo as Paramount Skydance and Netflix jostle for control, NBC suddenly appears subscale.
Netflix, Amazon, Apple and Google/YouTube have balance sheets that dramatically dwarf NBCUniversal’s buying power (at least, if those companies choose to spend on TV programming).
Disney has a $200 billion market valuation — far larger than NBCU, which is just a division of internet giant Comcast, whose entire market cap is just over $100 billion. And NBCU is consciously getting smaller, having just spun off its entire cable network portfolio (including CNBC) other than Bravo.
NBC used to compete with ABC, CBS, Fox and a handful of basic cable networks like TNT, FX and TBS for scripted entertainment. Those days are over. The competition has morphed to include tech streaming giants, and NBC’s pocketbook and global reach is simply dwarfed by larger rivals.
“You look at where the competition has come from, at least in the latest media, it’s been the entertainment side,” NBC Sports head Rick Cordella told CNBC in a recent interview. “For scripted dramas, you see Apple and Netflix and Amazon producing fantastic dramas and other shows. Sports is harder. Sports is relationships. Sports is production. Sports is reach of broadcast. And so we have a little bit of an advantage in the sports category that we may not quite have in other ones.”
This isn’t to say NBCUniversal can’t invest in scripted television at all. The company recently signed “Yellowstone” creator Taylor Sheridan to a five-year deal that begins in 2029 and is worth about $1 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.
NBC has also hit some home runs with unscripted TV,…
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