The Universal Sports channel will be taken off the air next month, and its portfolio of Olympic Sports moving into the hands of NBCUniversal and NBC Sports.
CyclingNews.com reports that NBC executives broke the news to Universal employees this week. Universal will reportedly shut down on November 16.
NBC is technically part of the ownership of Universal, but is only a minority share owner. Universal operates as an independent network, and has recently done most of the coverage of Olympic sports outside of the Olympics themselves. All of the world championships footage you saw on SwimSwam.com this past summer was courtesy of Universal Sports.
NBC will apparently take over coverage of Olympic sports, but there are no specifics yet as to what that will mean for swimming specifically. NBC only released a short statement expressing their excitement at the prospect of hosting Universal’s sporting coverage, and saying more details would be coming out in November when the transaction officially closes and the Universal channel shuts down.
The NBC statement:
We are thrilled to be finalizing an agreement with Universal Sports that will provide NBCUniversal and NBC Sports with an impressive collection of media rights to some of the world’s most prestigious sporting events. We will have more information regarding our plans when the transaction closes in November.
Universal Sports Network has been providing outstanding coverage of sports outside what the network channels want and have time to show. I am extremely disappointed to no longer see live coverage, full from end to end not just a one hour recap, of sports from cycling, swimming, horse, skating, running, to lesser sports like curling. Frequently live with repeats.
What a shame this has happened!!!!!
Looks like things should work out, NBC announced today they acquired the Olympic sports rights from Universal Sports. The key channel now will be UniversalHD, important to note there HD…yes no more SD! http://fangsbites.com/nbcsn/nbc-sports-group-to-take-over-universal-sports-portfolio.html
What happens to the coverage for the ISU figure skating championships now in progress? Did the shutting down of Universal Sports Network have anything to do with the crisis in Paris?
USN is our favorite channel. We expect that all sports that American sponsors don’t consider
profit generating will be dropped. Be prepared to kiss goodbye to not only swimming and cycling, but gymnastics, figure skating, alpine skiing, rhythmic gymnastics, curling and a host of other olympic sports, and pretty much everything on the channel. which probably was the plan all along.
the only swimming coverage on USN over the last two years (with the exception of the contracted FINA worlds championships) have been the arena pro series meets. there are only six meets and usn has only broadcast two days of each meet. I don’t see why cant NBCSN or NBC universal broadcast these meets as long as it doesn’t conflict with their NHL coverage. as stated above those channels reach a much wider audience than USN.
Maybe they’ll get a new color commentator: SwimSwam’s fan fave Mel Stewart! That would be a big improvement.
The NBC Sports streaming app is pretty good- be wonderful if they moved a bunch of that content online. Given that a lot of it is slightly repackaged Eurosport content, seems like it wouldn’t cost too much for them to do that.
how many other people think this is a disaster, USN being shut down. nbc, and nbc sports do not give the event coverage that USN does, not only in swimming but all sports that are not mainstream, alpine skiing ,biking, rugby etc. NBC will do an absolute s$%& job when covering these sports.