NBC Sports extends Premier League deal
STAMFORD — Since 2013, Stamford-based NBC Sports has produced English Premier League programming for a growing audience in the U.S. It will keep broadcasting the action from one of the world’s elite soccer divisions after parent company NBCUniversal announced Thursday a six-year extension of its partnership with the league.
The new agreement starts in the 2022-23 season and will run through 2028. All 380 matches each season will be exclusively carried across NBCUniversal platforms, including NBC, USA Network, Peacock, Telemundo and Universo.
“We are excited to come to this long-term extension with the Premier League,” NBC Sports Chairman Pete Bevacqua said in a statement. “Our Premier League team, led by Jon Miller, has been incredibly dedicated to growing the Premier League in the United States over the last nine years. This new agreement is also a testament to the hard work of production, marketing and other areas of our company, as well as the tremendous partnership that has been established with the leadership and club owners of the Premier League.”
NBC Sports officials did not disclose dollar amounts in the agreement, but Bevacqua alluded to the financial terms in a conference call Thursday with reporters.
“Certainly, the value has gone up. The price has gone up. I think that’s because the property has proven itself to be incredibly valuable in the U.S.,” Bevacqua said. “We had a range of a rights fee that we felt comfortable committing to this property. Obviously, that was thought out on our part. This has fallen in that range, and we’re comfortable moving forward because we know that this will continue to be a success for our company, will continue to be a success on NBC, on USA, and on Peacock.”
Premier League officials praised NBC Sports’ coverage of the league, including Premier League Mornings, which are gameday fan festivals filmed at sites across the U.S. The latest edition of Premier League Mornings was held Oct. 23-24 at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
“NBC Sports’ Premier League Mornings programming is now a real institution among supporters in America, with fans getting up early to come together and cheer on their favorite club, week in, week out,” Premier League Chief Executive Richard Masters said in a statement. “It’s an exciting time for football in the U.S., and we look forward to continuing to work with NBC Sports to bring our competition to even more fans over the next six years.”
While the U.S. Premier League viewership is a fraction of the audience for “Sunday Night Football” — Sports’ most-watched show and the No. 1 primetime program for the past 10 years — its following has steadily grown in recent years. NBC Sports is averaging a total audience of 609,000 viewers across its English- and Spanishlanguage Premier League television match windows this season — the highest viewership average through this point in the season since 2015-16 and up 14 percent from last year.
NBC Sports has carried 489 of the 500 mostwatched live Premier League matches in U.S. television history.
As NBC Sports prepares to shut down its NBCSN cable channel by the end of next month, the new deal would support the migration of content, including Premier League programming to other properties such as the Peacock streaming platform, according to Josh Shuart, director of sports management at Sacred Heart University’s Jack Welch College of Business & Technology.
“I absolutely love this deal, for a myriad of reasons,” Shuart said. “For NBC, they secure exclusivity as America’s Premier League destination. The financials make sense, and this officially and definNBC itively confirms that soccer is part of the ‘Big 5’ sports in the United States. NBC staved off all competitors in reaching this deal. There are other soccer media rights deals currently controlled by the competition, but the EPL is the most coveted soccer property in the world.”
Its Premier League studio programming is filmed at NBC Sports’ headquarters at 1 Blachley Road on Stamford’s East Side. About 60 Stamford-based staff work on Premier League shows each season.