SBJ Media: NBC racing toward a ‘golden moment’ in 2026

I want to be a Nets fan, but they make it hard. Instead, I’m riding with the Knicks this NBA postseason, but they’re also stressful. I spent Thursday night at my favorite sports bar in Brooklyn, and had the NBA, NHL and NFL on three screens in my line of vision.

While I was watching basketball and the NFL Draft on Thursday, Saturday may have been the first time I’ve been fully invested in the Draft’s Day 3 -- I needed to see if Shedeur Sanders landed anywhere. My guess is the ESPN team was thrilled to be able to use the extensive graphic and video package they had prepared for the moment his name was called ... in the fifth round.

NBC Sports has three tentpole events over 10 days in 2026 -- that would be the Super Bowl, NBA All-Star Weekend and the start of the Milan Winter Olympics, with the FIFA Men’s World Cup following over that summer. And this should all help it going into upfront season.

“Having this embarrassment of riches that we’ve seen is this golden moment,” said Peter Lazarus, EVP/advertising sales and partnerships, referring to NBCUniversal’s upfront presentation and pitch to marketers scheduled for next month.

The NBA’s deal with NBC that debuts in 2025-26 includes 100 regular-season broadcasts each season between NBC and Peacock, as well as over 50 WNBA games -- including three WNBA Finals -- across NBC, Peacock and USA Network.

This fall features the NFL season, the Ryder Cup (which Lazarus believes will be a “giant moment”) and the addition of the NBA. It then heads into an “epic” February with the NFL postseason, opening ceremonies of the 2026 Winter Games, the NBA All-Star Weekend and more.

“When you think about opening ceremonies to Super Bowl, we have the opportunities to tell the stories of both. How do we talk about the Super Bowl? How do we tell the Olympic story to Super Bowl fans?

“We need as much promotional power as we can get, and that will lead to the NBA All-Star Game in L.A.,” said Lazarus. “We’ll have this great promotional platform into one of our first Sunday night basketball games.”

NBC is ready to enter its first year as a media partner of the NBA and WNBA, with nearly half of its NBA games to stream exclusively on Peacock.

All-Star Weekend is a huge moment for NBC, and Lazarus promises a shake-up from past broadcasts. “We think the All-Star Game will evolve,” he said. “I can’t get into the details of it, but we’ll put our own spin on it.”

Skiing to Italy

Lazarus confirmed that NBCUniversal is “slightly ahead of pace” in advertising sales for the 2026 Milan Olympics, a Winter Games that won’t face the boycotts and significant time-zone differences experienced by 2022’s Olympics in Beijing. The 2024 Paris Olympics drew $1.25 billion in sales.

“From Paris to here, the Olympics are back,” he said. “The playbook that we used in Paris, changing the viewing experience, to Team USA performing, to bringing pop culture into it … when you look at what the Four Nations did [9.3 million viewers], we think that the Olympic hockey tournament could do double that.”

Upfront time

Last year, NBC saw around 40% of upfront dollars targeted toward sports, and it expects 50% across this year and next. In 2022, NBC reported $7 billion in total upfront dollars (the last year we have information for).

“Part of that is how do you qualify sports?” Lazarus asked me. “You could put Olympics in multiple categories. In our mind, it lives within sports, but we think of it as much more of an entertainment and cultural event as it is anything else. But when we include Olympics and we include World Cup, we see it as 50% -- maybe even more.”

Added Lazarus: “I feel like the luckiest guy in the world. I have the opportunity to manage this group [and] to represent these properties. I don’t try to be corny about it, but there’s very few people in this industry that get to sit in the seat as a sales leader and take these types of properties to the market. Bringing the NBA onboard really changed our offering quite a bit.”

That offer now includes increased 1Q and 2Q inventory -- and gives access to a younger audience.

“We went to market first with the NBA,” Lazarus said around upfront conversations. “We have what we believe is the largest offering with regular-season games and more playoff games than anybody else. The power of broadcast, which we think will bring reach and scale, is an offering the NBA hasn’t seen in a long time.”

NBC took the NBA to market in December, and Lazarus said the group made the early move ahead of the upfront to show advertisers “what we’re doing differently” in its schedule to bring viewers closer to the fan experience enjoyed in venues.

Derby days

The 150th Derby last year had its best audience number since 1989, with an average of 16.7 million viewers, and you can see that reflected in the sales numbers for this weekend’s event. Lazarus said the Derby is “essentially sold out,” with key categories up, including pharma (+43%), betting (+17%), finance (+12%) and auto (+23%), with 11 new advertisers onboard. NBC also reupped with Churchill Downs last year to carry the event through 2032.

“The Derby has always been a really good bellwether for us in May, and this year just continues,” said Lazarus.

The WNBA’s media partners will nationally broadcast multiple preseason games for the first time. Four national broadcasts will run across ESPN, Ion and NBA TV, and 14 of the 15 preseason games will be available on WNBA League Pass. It marks the first time all of the league’s preseason games will be televised.

The move comes from the unprecedented demand for the WNBA and women’s sports. Nearly 2 million people watched a livestream of the Sky vs. Lynx preseason game last year -- but on X from a fan stream, as the game was unavailable on WNBA League Pass. The WNBA averaged 657,000 viewers for the historic 2024 regular season, its best mark in 24 years and fueled by huge numbers for Caitlin Clark’s rookie season with the Indiana Fever.

One preseason game is exclusive to ESPN -- a matchup this Sunday between the Fever and the Brazilian National Team at 4pm ET on an ESPN platform. The specific network is still in the works, pending results of the NBA playoffs. Talent assignments are still up in the air for the same reason.

The WNBA tips off on Ion/Scripps Sports with a preseason doubleheader on Friday. The network has Paige Bueckers’ debut with the Wings against the Aces at 7pm ET at Notre Dame, and Angel Reese and the Sky against the Brazilian team at 9pm ET -- playing at Reese’s former stomping grounds at LSU. Ion is bringing back its studio show for the preseason games, which is also the league’s first preseason doubleheader. NBA TV has the rights to Fever vs. Mystics at 1pm ET Saturday.

The WNBA’s newest team, the Golden State Valkyries, makes its debut May 6 in San Francisco against the L.A. Sparks, which also will mark Kelsey Plum’s first game with the Southern California team since her trade from Las Vegas.

The regular season begins Friday May 16 on Ion, with an ABC doubleheader on May 17. It’s the first year of an expanded regular season, where teams will now play 44 games, up from the previous 40. The Finals are also moving from a best-of-five to a best-of-seven series for the first time. Disney holds the rights to the entire postseason.

I’ll likely be at Connecticut vs. New York in Brooklyn on May 9 –- come say hi if you see me. That game will be on League Pass.

The Knicks’ local TV revenue will plummet $41.4M next season and $202M in total by 2029 after a public SEC filing last Friday revealed the team must take a 28% media rights fee haircut as part of MSG Network’s attempt to restructure its debt.

Sources said the team was originally slated to earn a rights fee payment from its parent company MSG next season worth $148.02M -- second highest in the NBA behind the Lakers’ $192.10M -- but that will now dip to $106.56M, still second most in the league. But as part of their Transaction Support Agreement filed with the SEC, the Knicks’ annual rights fee escalator will also void, meaning between now and the end of its MSG media rights contract in 2028-29, the Knicks will have lost $202.3M in total TV money.

The drops are due to a pending arrangement with JP Morgan that reportedly helps MSG Networks restructure its debt, gain loan forgiveness and stave off bankruptcy. But it also alters one of the more profitable media rights fee deals in the NBA.

This past season, the Knicks earned a $142.43M intra-company rights fee payment from MSG, which sources said was scheduled to rise to $148.02M in 2025-26; $153.95M in 2026-27; $160.10M in 2027-28; and $166.51M in 2028-29. Those numbers were also set to grow incrementally through the end of the contract in 2034-35, although those figures are currently undisclosed. But, according to the Transaction Support Agreement, the Knicks’ local media rights deal now must end after the 2028-29 season, meaning the Knicks’ total TV money loss could conceivably climb to nearly $300M.

What happens by the end of the decade then is entirely up for conjecture. The Knicks can either negotiate a new local media rights deal for the 2029-30 season or become part of an expected conglomerate of teams that opt in to a national NBA streaming RSN. With the Knicks at odds with the league over revenue sharing and what owner James Dolan has called a lack of transparency, most insiders suspected the team would not opt in to a NBA-led RSN platform. But that could change.

• While Comcast NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service still lost $215 million in Q1, that’s down from $639 million a year ago, with 5 million new subscribers -- and the company hopes that with the arrival of the NBA, Peacock will continue its growth.
• After taking UConn’s Paige Bueckers first overall in the WNBA Draft, the Wings reached an agreement with a triumvirate of broadcast partners to televise 28 regular season games free over-the-air across 12 Texas markets, reports SBJ’s Tom Friend.
• MLB and media brand Boardroom expanded their relationship for 2025, with the firm handling talent-booking and event afterparty production and programming for the July 12 MLB All-Star Celebrity Softball Game in Atlanta and more, writes SBJ’s Mike Mazzeo.
• Youth sports platform GameChanger’s “For the Sport of Love” brand campaign is its first national spot, filmed across the greater L.A. area shortly after the wildfires and featuring various high schools and club organizations, notes SBJ’s Irving Mejia-Hilario.
• The recent episode of the Sports Media Podcast features Orioles President/Business Operations Catie Griggs discussing MASN+ and its potential pursuit of the Nationals’ media rights and NFL Network VP/Executive Producer Charlie Yook providing an inside look at producing the NFL Draft.