On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that NBC is exploring launching a sports-focused cable channel to simulcast its wide array of Peacock-exclusive sports broadcasts.
Yes, you read that right. In the year 2025, NBC is thinking about debuting a new cable network. And they’re considering doing so after spinning off the vast majority of their current cable portfolio, no less. Not to mention, they shuttered their old sports cable channel, NBCSN, in 2021!
I don’t think a day goes by where we here at Awful Announcing don’t talk about cord-cutting and the end of cable television. So why in the world would NBC think it’s a good idea to debut a new cable network in 2025? One word: panic.
Peacock has gone all-in on a live sports strategy. The streamer has gobbled up marquee rights ranging from NFL football to the Big Ten to the NBA and well beyond. Those broadcast rights don’t come cheap. NBC, for instance, is paying $2.45 billion per year beginning this fall when it starts airing NBA games, about half of which will be Peacock exclusives. The streamer has already announced a $3 per month price hike that was implemented this week, largely because that NBA bill is about to come due.
It’s clear that, while NBC has frequently touted live sports’ ability to drive Peacock subscriptions, the network is making a discerning calculation that Peacock subscriptions alone won’t be enough to justify the cost of those broadcast rights. NBC needs a way to supplement that incremental subscriber growth, and what better way to do that than to launch a cable network filled with programming people actually care about and need? You get the best of both worlds: more Peacock subscribers along with monthly carriage fees from pay TV distributors.
Should NBC actually go forward and launch the channel, they’ll be admitting to some level of buyer’s remorse on the NBA deal. $2.45 billion is more than the network pays the NFL for Sunday Night Football, the highest rated primetime show in all of television. The NBA as a property is largely unproven in how much it can drive subscriptions to streaming services. And frankly, it might drive a lot fewer than NBC originally anticipated when it signed its deal last year.
Regular season NBA games simply aren’t a needle-mover. The most accurate comparison to the NBA-Peacock deal so far is Apple TV+’s Friday Night Baseball deal with MLB. That package of regular season baseball games, which is orders of magnitude cheaper than NBC/Peacock’s NBA deal, has done very little to drive subscriptions for Apple. It may well be the case that, for high-volume sports like baseball and basketball, fans are willing to sacrifice a few games per season if it means not having to subscribe to another streaming service.
And for the NBA, where there will still be games on ABC, NBC, ESPN, and Prime Video (which boasts a much wider reach than Peacock), Peacock seems like an easy service to forego, even for some of the NBA’s core fans.
This potential cable channel, of course, is about much more than the NBA. It’s about NBC’s overall live sports strategy and its multi-billion dollar price tag. We all know cable is dying, but it’s surprisingly resilient among one group of television viewers: sports fans. If your company is paying billions of dollars for live sports rights, but only a fraction of them are airing on linear television, you’re likely losing out on tons of potential revenue.
Around 65 million households still subscribe to a pay TV bundle. And while NBC would reportedly only make this new cable channel available in select offerings, like genre-specific sports bundles, there’s certainly still an audience out there that wants access to these games in a linear setting.
One benefit of launching a channel like this is that your games will actually show up in people’s channel guides; viewers won’t have to seek out a random regular season NBA game on Peacock, it will just be there for them like it always has been. Perhaps this is misguided, but it seems way more likely that someone would watch a regular season NBA game if it simply appeared on their channel guide rather than having to actively opt into opening the Peacock app.
Launching this cable channel would simply be an acknowledgement of the shortcomings of streaming in the current landscape. While viewers will turn on Prime Video or Netflix for an “event” like an NFL playoff game or a Mike Tyson boxing match, few are going to actively seek out run of the mill sports on streaming. Even in 2025, you’ll still reach way more viewers by airing games through traditional platforms.
NBC doesn’t want to put all of its eggs in the streaming basket quite yet. Especially when there’s $2.45 billion on the line. That’s one helluva gamble on regular season NBA games. But the network’s thinking with regards to this potential new channel is right. They’re a lot more likely to have that gamble pay out if those Peacock games are available elsewhere.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.