These comments from Comcast Corporation (CMCSA) CEO Brian Roberts yesterday give us another hint - Notably, he did not mention the NHL at all.
https://seekingalpha.com/article/44...presents-morgan-stanley-2021-technology-media
BenSwinburne
That's great. I want to broaden out your comment on NBC and Sky and focus in on sports because I think that that's been a huge part of the success at NBC and in particular Sky, over time. There's obviously a lot of focus on the NFL right now. I think there'll be a Premier League auction, I presume this year. But cord cutting is a reality, especially, here in the U.S. So how does Jeff, how do you and Jeff and the team, think about balancing these costs and these long-term bets you're making with the realities around the ecosystem?
Brian Roberts
Well, I think you start with realism. And just as you're saying, you've got to take an honest look at where the value is and try to be honest with yourself on how you can pay for it and not - and you're going to have to make hard decisions. So it's no different than the entertainment side and try to, we made some hard decisions during pandemic, and we restructured all of our Cable nets, and we're merging NBC Sports Network into USA Network. So we have a stronger one channel instead of two channels, and we'll have sports as part of the channel, but not exclusively on the channel.
And so we're very excited about, hopefully, a relationship continuing with the NFL. And we've, that's a big priority.
And but there will be therefore tough decisions where we have relationships that maybe won't be continued. And that'll be someone else's good fortune, perhaps. But we're going to be disciplined in trying to find the balance so that it allows us to redirect assets to the conversation we're just having about streaming or other technologies that might have emerged over the next few years that allow you to say, well, this is the right bet for us and historically, it was that and tomorrow it is this.
So we're looking at every sports relationship we're doing to have streaming aspect to it, not just a linear television aspect. And we're using it as we did with Peacock. If you look at Premier League, I mentioned that it's a great relationship. Golf, WWE, all of those events are also on Peacock as certainly we have with the Olympics. Let me just take a second on Olympics, one of the things we did way back in the day, was have all rights to all technology for the period up to 2032. And so as streaming has come along, we're very excited for this summer, to bring a lot of the Olympics, not just to broadcast, not just to Cable, as we've historically done to have Xfinity as a partner, Comcast as a partner of the Olympic movement, but also Peacock. And I think you'll see some great innovation around that.
And then, if I might, I think about the moment in time we're at and where you started, from a year ago, and I think about potentially how emotional and exciting and important the Olympics could be this July, for the world. If you take yesterday's announcement on exciting progress on vaccines, and you look on a global basis, the chance to - for us to be the company to bring to the U.S., the emotion of the world coming back together. And hopefully, celebrating sport and our global society, you can get the Paralympics Game, right on the heels.
It's a pretty exciting opportunity for our company's soul and heart and what we bring to our customers and to our employees. So we're really high on what can happen with sports, there's nothing like sports. And if you look in the U.S., with the Olympics and the NFL, and in UK with the Premier League, we're very relevant company but we're going to have to make some choices. And they'll be choices we make with shareholders in mind and long-term value as well.
