Olympic sports governing bodies and their fans reacted with cautious optimism to InterMedia Partners’ decision to shut down the Universal Sports channel and sell its stable of rights to minority owner NBCUniversal.
Founded in 2006 as World Championship Sports Network, Universal Sports has given a home to Olympic sports that otherwise rarely escape niche status in the U.S. outside of the Olympic Games. But its tiny distribution, estimated to be 16.5 million homes by SNL Kagan, and lack of Nielsen ratings were a constant challenge.
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The channel has given exposure to Olympic sports like swimming.
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“It just wasn’t a rated network,” said Matt Farrell, chief marketing officer for USA Swimming, whose three-year deal with Universal to air the Arena Pro Swim Series expires next year. “So, that made it harder to package from a sponsorship standpoint. But they’ve been good to us, and been a good partner, and helped us grow this swim series. It’s unfortunate to see for the Olympic world, but for swimming I think we will end up being in a good place.”
The future of the InterMedia-NBCUniversal partnership had been up in the air for more than a year, and answers — if incomplete ones — were met with some relief from sport marketers who wanted to sign TV deals and sell sponsorships after this year.
The most immediate question is the future of events already scheduled to air on Universal after the signal goes dark Nov. 16, such as the International Skating Union’s Grand Prix event Dec. 10-13. Among the assets held by Universal are the U.S. rights to numerous international championships, including beach volleyball, track and field, swimming, rugby and cycling.
“I would assume that NBC is going to cherry-pick the marquee events and the marquee championships that make a lot of sense for NBC Sports, particularly as they lead into Olympic years,” said Lee Berke, president and CEO of LHB Sports, Entertainment & Media.
Those events could abruptly shift from nonrated Universal to NBC Sports Network, which is distributed to 85 million homes. But the remainder may be relegated to online streams if they can’t break into an increasingly crowded NBCSN programming schedule. NBC and Universal have declined to address those questions until the deal closes.
Governing bodies that control their own digital streaming feeds, such as USA Track and Field’s USATF.tv or U.S. Figure Skating’s Ice Network, have less to lose if their sports lose linear TV time in the deal.
“What you lose is a die-hard, die-hard fan, but specific to figure skating, you’re going to get them on Ice Network,” said Chris Pearlman, executive vice president at Van Wagner Sports & Entertainment, which sells media and sponsorships for U.S. Figure Skating.
Universal expanded its distribution in a June deal with regional cable company Suddenlink, but the network had been preparing for this news for some weeks, sources said. At one point, Universal seemed to be a logical platform for the International Olympic Committee’s new Olympic Channel, Berke said.
“But when the IOC made an announcement about the Olympic Channel, that it was more digitally based and Comcast was cooperating, and Universal Sports was nowhere mentioned in that announcement, you had to assume its days were numbered,” Berke said.
