This is the sixth in a series from TheWrap exploring how sports is transforming the entertainment business. Read the full series here.
Chances are Feb. 8, 2026, will go down as one of the most intense days in the history of sports streaming.
On that Sunday, NBC and Peacock will air two of the biggest sporting events of the year: the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics and Super Bowl LX. And it will be doing so in the middle of the 2025-2026 NBA season, which they’re carrying for the first time in more than two decades.
The rare trifecta underscores NBC and Peacock’s massive bet on sports, a $29 billion juggernaut that has media companies rethinking their programming lineups. Peacock, in particular, needs the boost that popular sporting events can bring given that it’s still the smallest of the major streaming services and the only one still in the red.
Now with the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics, it has two crown jewels of the sports world, along with the return of the NBA giving it a consistent, season-long lift.
“It’s definitely an embarrassment of riches,” Rick Cordella, president of NBC Sports, told TheWrap. “We have the manpower to pull it off, and we’re excited to see what you can do when you take three big events and put them in a very close proximity to each other.”
NBC’s sportspalooza will start on Oct. 21 with the return of the NBA to NBC in an 11-year deal that will reportedly cost the network $2.5 billion annually. All games that will be aired on NBC Sports will also stream on Peacock, a move that will test how the platform handles consistently airing major sporting events. (No NBA games, however, will air on NBC on that critical Feb. 8 date.)
The NBA’s season will kickstart the lead-up to what NBCUniversal has dubbed “Legendary February,” though this isn’t the first time NBC has aired the Olympics at the same time as the Super Bowl. In 2022, the NFL’s biggest game aired on NBC while the network was also airing the Olympics. That game averaged 112 million viewers when it came to total audience delivery, becoming the broadcast’s most-watched show in five years.
But in 2022, Peacock was in a very different place. The streamer was two years old, only had 9 million paying subscribers and, due to time zone differences, was airing an Olympics in the U.S. that was taking place while most Americans were asleep.
Peacock will be entering next year’s more time zone-friendly Olympics in Italy with 41 million paid subscribers and a streamer that’s proven it’s not only possible but profitable to go all-in on the Olympics. NBC and Peacock’s wall-to-wall coverage of the Paris 2024 Olympics set a viewership record, securing 180 billion minutes watched across the 17-day event. Olympics viewership was so high it led to a 3% lift in total TV viewing in the U.S.
[Note: Data for the above chart was found in a variety of media reports. Also, NBCUniversal is nearing a three-year media rights deal with the MLB that would reportedly be worth $600 million.]
As the Paris Olympics proved, there is value in offering viewers a deep dive into every sport available, a goal that the company utilized Peacock to accomplish. But the Super Bowl as well as the NBA All-Star Game will challenge the streamer’s ability to deliver on a mass viewership scale. “Arguably, if they can do well on both of those, it seems like they should be able to drive their subscription numbers,” Shirin Malkani, co-chair of the sports industry group at Perkins Cole, told TheWrap.
The question is, will NBC be able to deliver on these massive sporting events? It’s a schedule that seems primed to challenge not only NBC and Peacock as sports hubs but also their technical capabilities in this modern era of digitally streaming live events.
Rising to the challenge
Having the rights to these sporting events is one thing, but if people are unable to stream them, it’s going to be a failure. That’s where Patrick Miceli, the chief technology officer for Global Streaming and NBCUniversal Media Group, comes in.
“The stakes for delivering a rock-solid viewing experience at scale with these major events are only getting higher as fan expectations grow,” Miceli told TheWrap.
To prepare for these games, the Peacock team started testing for live events months in advance to ensure that the streams would broadcast at an acceptable bitrate and without interruption across every region, internet connection and device. The team is also relying on Peacock’s history of airing live sports. Aside from the 2024 Olympics, there was last year’s AFC Wild Card game, which averaged 24.6 million viewers, according to Nielsen. That Olympics was also praised for its technical innovations. The streamer is also home to WWE Main Event and routinely airs games from the Premier League and Big Ten college football.
The NBA games, which will start in late October, will also test Peacock’s setup. Miceli considers these games an opportunity to see how Peacock subscribers engage in live events, allowing them to make real-time adjustments to optimize the viewer experience. Those insights will then be applied to other NBA games and live events.
“We’re fortunate to have such a strong foundation of sports content and background in broadcast that allows us to continuously test and experiment throughout the year,” Miceli said. “Every game, every broadcast is essentially a stress test that helps us prepare for moments like February when all eyes are on our platform’s performance.”
While the Winter Olympics requires Peacock to scale its platform horizontally — meaning that the platform has to be ready for multiple people watching several live streams of different sports concurrently — the aggressive interest around the Super Bowl also means the platform will have to scale vertically — or be prepared for far more people than usual to live stream a single event on the platform. To account for these increased demands, Miceli’s team has been “simulating thousands of viewer traffic patterns and activity loads” to prepare for the expected millions of viewers.
“I knock on wood every time we have a big event,” Cordella said. “I have complete confidence that we will pull that off. We’ve done it in the past. We’ve done it at a very high-quality level.”
Shifting to sports and away from scripted
The addition of the NBA didn’t just create technical demands — it also had an impact on NBCUniversal’s strategy around content.
When NBCUniversal first started pursuing a deal to acquire the rights to the NBA, the goal was to build out NBC Sports’ year-round programming. Cordella admitted that while NBCUniversal is busy with the NFL and college basketball in the winter — as well as the Winter Olympics every four years — the slate is “thinner” in the spring. Before the NBA’s return to NBC, the network only had the Kentucky Derby and the U.S. Open, leaving a gap around the April/May timeline, into which the NBA fits perfectly. The deal also includes WNBA games, which Cordella identifies as “the undervalued portion of the asset that we see moving forward.”
Many also see this partnership with the league as an investment in NBC’s streaming vertical.
“Growing Peacock and its subs is important for [NBC]. In their profits and losses, they’re willing to overspend, in my estimation, because they think there’s upside for Peacock,” Bob Lynch, founder and CEO of marketing and data analytics firm SponsorUnited, told TheWrap.
While the deal expands Peacock’s sports offerings — which Cordella predicts will attract new viewers — the NBA’s arrival on NBC cut out three hours of primetime programming on the network. Those cuts prompted the cancellation of six NBC scripted series (“Grosse Pointe Garden Society,” “Lopez vs. Lopez,” “Night Court,” “Found,” “The Irrational” and” Suits LA”) ahead of upfronts in May.
Despite the cuts, NBCUniversal feels confident the live sports event will serve as a promotional vehicle for its other entertainment content, with NBCUniversal TV and streaming chief marketing officer Jenny Storms telling TheWrap, “When someone tunes in for sports on NBC or Peacock, we also want them to discover and fall in love with all the content we have to offer across scripted, unscripted, film and beyond.” Storms pointed to the “massive reach” garnered by the Sept. 4 NFL Kickoff game across NBC and Peacock that the companies used to drive viewers to the premiere of “The Office” spinoff series “The Paper” by “weaving elements from the series into our live NFL broadcast and encouraging them to watch after the game.” Storms added that broadcast can be utilized as “a megaphone to reach audiences no matter where they are, specifically with live sports.”
Incorporating talent
NBCUniversal wants to set its sports programming apart from the pack by tapping into marquee talent.
NBC has recruited an A-list suite of analysts to come on board for the NBA, including Brad Daugherty, Derek Fisher, Brian Scalabrine, Jamal Crawford, Reggie Miller and Grant Hill, with Mike Tirico, Noah Eagle and Terry Gannon serving as play-by-play commentators. But the real coup was signing sports legend Michael Jordan as a special contributor.
When Jordan was announced in May, Cordella noted that he was “incredibly proud” that the iconic player, whose six championships with the Chicago Bulls aired on NBC, would be returning to the network. “Michael’s legacy both on and off the court speaks for itself,” Cordella said during NBCUniversal’s upfront presentation.
“The NBA on NBC was a meaningful part of my career, and I’m excited about being a special contributor to the project,” Jordan said.
Recruiting talent with different specialties and focuses may be a way for NBC and Peacock to broaden its offerings and give the NBA audience something they can’t get anywhere else. One of the best and most successful examples is Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal’s “Inside the NBA,” a program that’s so popular it led to widespread criticism from fans when TNT parent company Warner Bros. Discovery lost the rights to the NBA to NBC. After a lawsuit from Warner Bros. Discovery, it was decided that “Inside the NBA” will continue but will be licensed to ESPN. That’s the power of a beloved commentator. The right personality or sports commentary show can become a destination in and of itself.
As for who may be part of the Olympics and the Super Bowl, people familiar with the matter have told TheWrap that discussions with content creators as possible talent are ongoing, potentially taking a page out of the NFL’s playbook. That could be especially alluring, considering the fact that the NBA has consistently ranked as the most-followed league on social media in the U.S.
Cordella noted that recruiting social media creators isn’t the team’s main focus, but, “at the end of the day, we’re trying to be innovative within our television broadcast or our streaming broadcast.”
“Whether NBC can lean into its existing talent or creator talent that it poaches from other platforms or develops themselves, that’s an interesting place where they could potentially grow,” Malkani said.
Not stopping sports growth
NBCUniversal is showing no signs of slowing down on its sports expansion, with news breaking in August that the company is nearing a three-year deal with Major League Baseball (MLB) to broadcast games across NBC and Peacock. Cordella said there was nothing to announce yet, but called the MLB a “top sports property in America.”
“We’ve had it historically on NBC, so it would be a great property … if we’re lucky enough to get it back, we’d love to have it back,” he said.
Peacock has gradually raised its prices, and could potentially hike them again ahead of its February sports marathon. “Everything that we do at NBCU Comcast is price and value, and we assess it, not based upon what the market says is working, [but] … based upon what we’re willing to pay based on what we think it’s worth to us,” Cordella said. “We’ll see where the market goes.”
This is the sixth in a series from TheWrap exploring how sports is transforming the entertainment business. Previously in the series:
How Tech Is Changing Sports Viewership and Fandom
From Actors to Athletes: Why Talent Agencies Are Going All-In on Sports
