NBC Sports Net (NBCSN) Going Away in 2022
 

Does anyone know what's going to happen to the races that NBCSN has been televising? I would imagine that the TC races will still be on NBC. But what about the Derby preps and the BC, including the win-and-you're-in races? Will they be on Peacock?

Most NBCSN programming is going to shift to USA Network, which was mentioned in a conference call yesterday. Some programming however will shift to Peacock.

In general, this is bad news for horse racing, as well as a couple of other sports I care a lot about (track and field, hockey, auto racing), because the reality is that only some of the former NBCSN stuff is going to be on USA, with a lot of it eventually moving to streaming.

And it's a bad trend for the television industry. NBC invested a lot of money in NBCSN. They bought a channel that already existed on many cable systems and probably paid a lot of money for that real estate on the cable dial. They signed numerous deals to obtain content for the channel. And they constantly promoted it on the network.

The failure of sports channels like this is going to disproportionately hit "minor" sports whose products aren't usually attractive enough to make it onto the networks or ESPN.

All of this could be good news for RTN, who already has a quality product.

A different product for sure, but better for horse players and racing.

Although I see the fees as extremely reasonable, it would be nice if RTN had a daily package of 3 days per month, etc.

My guess is limited impact. Fox Sports covers horse racing as well and you have TVG. Reality is paid TV is moving over to streaming where you have more options for the viewer and by its nature is on demand.

Fewer viewers, though, which has downstream effects on sports' popularity. And it's unclear whether the paid streaming model can really work for minor sports.

The younger generation isn't subscribing to expensive cable/satellite packages. So that channel was doomed in the future anyways. Their future might be better off being tied to a streaming giant like Amazon or putting races on Twitch.

I suspect the decline of comcast, which is part of NBC and has been losing cable TV customers by the millions the last few years, has something to do with this.

If they kept the same announcers and moved all the races to USA Network, I'd be fine with that but, somehow, I don't think that will happen.

Peacock is not the same; one can not record programs on Peacock. Suppose I wanted to watch a 3 hour football game that's on Peacock. I can't record the game and watch it with a 1 hour delay, in order to be able to fast forward through the commercials. I would be able to watch it when it's over, they would have a recording for me, but I might not be able to fast forward through the commercials. Suppose the game started at 1pm; and I wanted to start watching it at 2pm. I would have to start watching in real time missing the first hour; or wait until the game's over and watch their recording from the beginning. At least, that's my understanding; you can correct me if I'm wrong.

If I'm betting on the race, I would have to watch it in real time. But I consider racing a spectator sport not just a betting opportunity. For me it's 50% both. If all the NBCSN horse racing went to Peacock, that would give me one more reason not to watch it.

Redboard,

Good post.
:ThmbUp:

We do the same thing for a lot of sports.

Frankly, if we didn't have a DVR with "jump forward" I doubt we'd ever watch a game.

BTW, I've become a master at the jump-thing.

Forward = 30 seconds
Backward = 12 seconds

MLB pitchers come in 2 flavors - those who are 35 seconds and those who are about 25 seconds.

So, for the fast ones, it's Forward, Back, Back. LOL