Comcast’s Mike Cavanagh Expects NBA Deal To Score With Advertising, Subscription Revenue

Comcast president Mike Cavanagh told investors how the company plans to take advantage of its soon-to-be-completed $2.5 billion-a-year deal with the NBA.

Speaking on Comcast’s second-quarter earnings call Tuesday, Cavanagh, who also runs Comcast’s NBCUniversal unit, said he didn’t think that Warner Bros. Discovery’s attempt to match Amazon’s streaming package will affect NBCU’s deal with the league.

He said the company was excited to work with the NBA because pro basketball “brings in a broad, diverse and youthful audience that is culturally relevant and further expands NBCUniversal’s tremendous reach across broadband and streaming.”

“We can do a lot with those demographics around other programming,” he added.

Cavanagh said that working with the NBA will enable NBCU to create new entertainment content that will appear beyond the basketball season, “with exciting opportunities for companion programming and marketing collaborations that tap into the NBA’s pop-culture appeal.”

The NBA will also give NBCU a stronger year-round presence in sports, the biggest driver of linear viewing.

NBCU plans to generate revenue to pay for its NBA deal by selling NBA ad inventory packages with the company’s other programming and by acquiring and monetizing subscribers both on lits linear networks and on Peacock .

“Sports has been a great source of subscriber acquisition for Peacock,” he said, noting that people who subscribe to Peacock for sports also tend to watch other programming on the service.

Spending on the NBA will mean the company will be able to spend less on other forms of programming, he noted.

“The NBA's decision to partner with us is a testament to our breath and reach our operational excellence in sports and our decades of experience delivering world-class content  to consumers,” he said. “Much like our long-standing relationships with the NFL and the Olympics, we look forward to putting the weight of our entire company behind our partnership with the NBA.”

100 Games a Season

NBCU’s NBA package beginning with the 2025-26 season includes 100 regular season games each season appearing on NBC and Peacock. He said that was more regular-season games than The Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN and ABC or Amazon Prime Video will have.

NBCU will have first- and second-round playoff games each year and six conference finals series over the 11-year term of the deal.

Peacock will have 50 regular season games, including exclusive national Monday night games and double hearts.

Also Read: Peacock Losses Drop to $348 Million in Q2, But Some of That NFL Playoff Subscriber Growth Churns Away

There will be a season tip-off double header each year and a doubleheader on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

NBCU gets the NBA All-Star Game and All-Star Saturday Night. The All-Star Game will also appear on Telemundo, along with some regular season games.

The NBA deal also gives NBC more than 50 WNBA regular season games each year on Peacock, NBC and USA Network.  It also gets playoff games and three WNBA Finals.

NBCU also has rights to USA Basketball leading up to future Olympics and World Cups.

Comcast’s Xfinity will be the NBA’s marketing partner for the video category, Cavanagh said.