For two years, Comcast executives have spoken openly about their desire to see the company’s four regional sports networks (RSNs) offered through the streaming platform, Peacock. In a few weeks, streamers will finally have their first opportunity to watch live, local sports programming through the platform.
Comcast is targeting the first half of 2025 for the launch of their NBC Sports-branded RSNs via Peacock, according to two sources who spoke with The Desk last week on condition of anonymity. The streamer plans to charge between $10 to $15 per month for access to its RSNs in Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco and Sacramento, where subscribers will be able to watch locally-televised games from the Philadelphia 76ers, Philadelphia Flyers, Boston Celtics, San Francisco Giants, San Jose Sharks, Sacramento Kings and other professional sports franchises, along with related shoulder programming.
Additionally, Comcast is in discussions with other broadcasters to serve as a distribution hub for third-party RSNs not owned by the company, a high-level executive familiar with the company’s plans told The Desk. The executive declined to say which companies were approached.
Reached for comment on Monday, a spokesperson for Peacock said the service would respond shortly, but did not follow up by press time. News of Comcast’s intention to launch RSNs on Peacock early next year, and the company’s ongoing conversations with third party RSN broadcasters, was first revealed Thursday morning on “The Editor’s Desk,” a weekly web series featuring this reporter and media analyst Rick Howe that is published via Microsoft News.
For years, the RSN business has struggled due to a downturn in the cable and satellite television industry, as customers flee expensive pay TV offerings for cheaper, streaming-based alternatives. Sports programming continues to attract fans to live TV services like Fubo and DirecTV Stream, but their customer counts pale in comparison to that of Netflix, Prime Video, Peacock and Warner Bros Discovery-owned Max, which only recently have started effectuating distribution pacts with professional sports teams and leagues for their services. (Netflix is scheduled to stream two National Football League games for the first time on Christmas Day.)
With each subscriber loss to cable and satellite, sports RSNs earn fewer dollars from distribution fees charged to cable, satellite and cable-like streaming platforms. For the leagues, their games reach fewer current and potential fans, which impacts other sources of revenue, including merchandising and ticket sales.
This was hinted two years ago by Mark Lazarus, the Comcast executive in charge of the company’s cable networks, when he first affirmed the idea that Peacock would become a central distribution hub of NBC-owned sports networks. At an investor conference, Lazarus said that the current model of distribution locally-televised sports on cable only “won’t support what we’re currently paying” for those rights, and said stakeholders would need to embrace a “share-the-risk mentality” when it came to distributing those games through an Internet service like Peacock. (Lazarus is leaving Comcast to join “SpinCo,” the company that will comprise Comcast cable networks business, except Bravo. Comcast will retain the NBC Sports business, which includes the RSNs.)
When Lazarus first offered his thoughts on RSNs, the concept of distributing local sports over the Internet was still novel. It isn’t anymore. With fewer people subscribing to cable and satellite, some teams like the Dallas Mavericks, Dallas Stars and Anaheim Ducks have forged partnerships with local TV broadcasters in their markets, and launched subscription streaming services of their own to reach cord-cutters who prefer online access to games. Diamond Sports, the bankrupt RSN jointly owned by Sinclair and Allen Media Group, began selling online access to its FanDuel Sports Network channels (then branded as Bally Sports) in 2022, and has since inked distribution deals with Fubo and Amazon’s Prime Video to sell similar streaming passes on an à la carte basis. (The Desk could not confirm if Diamond Sports is one of the RSN operators that Comcast has approached about reselling access via Peacock.)
From the start, Peacock was built for sports — the service launched in April 2020, timed to coincide with the 2020 Summer Olympic Games, whose events were to be carried live and in their entirety on the platform. (The games were delayed to 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic; Peacock carried them and has offered all other Summer and Winter Olympic competitions since.) But Peacock could not initially offer locally-televised sports from its regional NBC Sports channels, because its contracts with individual sports teams largely limited the availability of those games to pay television platforms, and didn’t take into account streaming or other forms of digital distribution.
Those issues have been resolved over time, made slightly easier by the fact Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Hockey League (NHL) have been proponents of similar distribution deals with Diamond Sports and other RSN broadcasters over time.
Comcast has tentatively targeted mid-March to begin selling its RSN add-on to Peacock customers, timed to coincide with the start of MLB’s 2025 season, though it may market and sell the RSN add-on earlier if conversations with third-party RSN broadcasters progress. As of last Friday, no deal was in place with an outside RSN broadcaster to sell their channels via Peacock.
If any deal comes together, it could provide a breath of fresh air to the RSN model by giving similarly-situated channels a platform to reach cord-cutters, one backed by a major entertainment network and broadband Internet provider.
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Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story erroneously reported that NBC Sports Boston had telecast rights to games played by the Boston Red Sox. Those games are available on the New England Sports Network (NESN). Additionally, the earlier version misstated the number of regional sports networks operated by Comcast. It owns four NBC-branded RSNs, not five; the erroneous count was based on Comcast’s minority stake in SNY.
