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NBC Sports

NBC Sports is an American programming division for NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, that is responsible for sports broadcasts on their broadcast network NBC, the cable channels NBC owns, and on Peacock. The division was founded on May 17, 1939 and is officially owned and operated by NBCUniversal's subsidiary NBC Sports Group. Formerly operating as "a service of NBC News", it broadcasts a diverse array of sports events, including Big East basketball, Big Ten football and basketball, NASCAR, the National Basketball Association (NBA), the National Football League (NFL), Major League Baseball (MLB), Notre Dame football, the Olympic Games, PGA Tour golf, the Premier League, the Tour de France, and Thoroughbred racing among others. With Comcast's acquisition of NBCUniversal in 2011, its own cable sports networks were aligned with NBC Sports into a part of the division known as the NBC Sports Group.

In 2000, NBC declined to renew its broadcast agreement with Major League Baseball (MLB). In 2002, NBC was additionally outbid by ESPN and ABC for the National Basketball Association (NBA)'s new broadcast contract, ending the league's twelve-year run on NBC.

During this era, NBC experimented with broadcasting emerging sports. In 2001, NBC partnered with the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) to establish the XFL – a new football league which introduced modified rules and debuted to tremendous, but short-lived fanfare, only lasting one season (NBC shared broadcast rights to the league's games, which were mainly held on Saturday nights, with UPN). In 2003, NBC obtained the broadcast rights and a minority interest in the Arena Football League (AFL). NBC televised weekly games on a regional basis, as well as the entire playoffs. The deal lasted four years, after which the league and NBC parted ways.

Beginning with the 1999 NASCAR Winston Cup Series, NBC began its foray into NASCAR. NBC, along with Fox and TNT, obtained the broadcast rights of the top two series – the NASCAR Cup Series and NASCAR Xfinity Series – in a six-year deal, beginning in 2001. NBC televised the second half of the season and alternated coverage of the Daytona 500 with Fox. In December 2005, NBC announced that it would not renew its agreement with NASCAR. In 2001, NBC obtained the broadcast rights to horse racing's Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing in a five-year deal.

In 2004, NBC reached a broadcast agreement with the National Hockey League (NHL). The revenue-sharing deal called for the two sides to split advertising revenue after NBC recouped the expenses. Games were supposed to begin airing on NBC during the 2004–05 season, however a league lockout that resulted in the cancellation of that season delayed the start of the contract until the second half of the 2005–06 NHL season. NBC televised regular season games at first on Saturday afternoons before moving the telecast to Sundays, Saturday and Sunday afternoon playoff games, and up to five games of the Stanley Cup. Additionally in 2008, NBC broadcast the 2008 NHL Winter Classic, an outdoor NHL game played on New Year's Day at Ralph Wilson Stadium, a success in attendance and television ratings. The following year's Winter Classic would become the most-watched regular season game in 34 years. In addition to this regular season success, Game 7 of the 2009 Stanley Cup Finals was watched by an average of 8 million viewers, the highest ratings for an NHL game in 36 years.

The NFL also returned to NBC in 2006 after an eight-year hiatus, broadcasting the league's new flagship Sunday Night Football game, along with select postseason games and Super Bowls XLIII, XLVI, XLIX, LII, LVI and LX.

In January 2011, Comcast finalized its acquisition of a majority share in NBC Universal. As a result of the merger, the operations of Comcast's existing sports networks, such as Golf Channel and NBCSN, were merged into an entity known as the NBC Sports Group. NBC Sports' senior vice president Mike McCarley additionally became Golf Channel's new head. NBC Sports' golf production unit was merged with Golf Channel, along with NBC's on-air staff, with that unit rebranding under the banner "Golf Channel on NBC", while Versus was reformatted toward a more mainstream audience, renamed the NBC Sports Network and eventually rebranded as NBCSN.

The merger also helped influence an extension of NBC Sports' contract with the NHL; the 10-year deal – valued at close to $2 billion, unified the cable and broadcast television rights to the league and introduced a new "Black Friday" Thanksgiving Showdown game on NBC, along with national coverage for every game in the Stanley Cup playoffs. On July 3, 2011, ESPN obtained the exclusive broadcast rights to The Championships, Wimbledon in a 12-year deal, ending NBC's television relationship with The Championships after 42 years.

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