NEW YORK—As more sports viewing shifts to streaming, NBCUniversal continues to reevaluate its strategies for distributing its sports coverage and has confirmed that it plans to shut down the Olympic Channel in September.
“In order to best reach our target audiences, we are reevaluating our programming distribution strategy regarding the content that currently airs on Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA with our partners at the IOC and USOPC,” an NBC Sports spokesperson confirmed to TV Tech. “We will be announcing our exciting new plans for Olympic content in the fall.”
The move comes after the company announced plans last year to shut down NBCSN and it launched a direct-to-consumer streaming service from its NESN regional sports network in June of 2022.
NBCU has long term U.S. rights to the Olympics through 2032 games and launched the Olympic Channel with the U.S. Olympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee as minority partners.
News of the shutdown was first reported in Sports Business Journal.
