NBC Sports

It’s called Playmaker Media, and the International Olympic Committee is its first client. The service will launch in competition with MLB Advanced Media in the sports live streaming space, and the move could arm it with technology that could help with future sports rights negotiations and to be sold as a service to other partners.

The NBC Sports Digital Shorts initiative will include about half-dozen original series produced for digital encompassing different categories, including special packages of highlights and exclusive interviews. The first project, Sherman’s Warriors, is a six-part docu-series following former Green Bay Packers head coach Mike Sherman that will debut Sunday, Oct. 18.

NBC Sports Group will carry the British Open in 2016, a year earlier than planned. Last week, NBC and Golf Channel finalized a deal with ESPN and the tournament’s operator to take over next year. NBC planned to tell its golf production team about the deal on Sunday, and an official announcement is planned this week.

NBC Sports is taking on whole new kind of game – the growing popularity of documentary programming. For years, producers at NBC’s dedicated Olympics unit have produced hours of documentary-style features to accompany its parent company’s mammoth coverage of that event. Now, with the debut of a new unit, NBC Sports Films, NBC Sports wants to take that type of programming and play it across everything from the sports-focused NBCSN cable network to its digital properties.

ESPN networks and NBC Sports led the industry with 57 and 42 Sports Emmy Award nominations, respectively, as the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences unveiled the 36th annual list of nominees. In terms of specific networks, ESPN led the way with 37 nods, while NBC earned 33. NBC Sports Group’s coverage of the XXII Olympic Winter Games in Sochi was also a big winner, earning 15 nominations — the most of any program.

The sport of boxing returned to broadcast TV on Saturday night in a big way with the first of 20 Premier Boxing Champions fights that will be seen on NBC between now and the end of the year. This weekend’s first fight featured some technical innovation, and viewers can expect more in the coming months.

NBC Sports Group and NBC Universal News Group’s EVP of Sales Seth Winter told reporters on a Wednesday conference call that the big game’s commercial slots are officially all spoken and accounted for. Winter also boasted that his team’s digital efforts have resulted in that platform tripling from NBC’s prior Super Bowl, hitting eight figures.

The NBC Sports Group and the prominent manager Al Haymon announced a multiyear deal that will include primetime cards on NBC and NBCSN.

Coming off the hugely popular World Cup this summer, NBC Sports is hoping to grow football-fever into a new national pastime with its Barclays Premier League soccer broadcasts beginning this weekend.

The popular soccer commentating duo known as the Men in Blazers is leaving ESPN for NBC Sports, becoming the latest in a series of recent bets on soccer’s rising popularity in the U.S. Starting shortly after the 2014-15 Premier League season begins later this month, the Men in Blazers, as television producer Michael Davies and writer Roger Bennett are known, will have a weekly Monday night show on NBC Sports and will contribute radio, TV and written pieces for the network’s various outlets. The terms of their contract weren’t disclosed, and the show doesn’t yet have a name.

News anchor Josh Elliott told the network on Sunday that he’s leaving for a job at NBC Sports. ABC News President Ben Sherwood moved quickly to replace him, appointing Amy Robach as the Good Morning America news anchor.

A year ago, the National Hockey League was mired in a bitter labor dispute that would eventually swallow up half the season and cost the network its broadcast of the league’s most lucrative event of the year, the Winter Classic. It’s a totally different world today. NBC Sports approaches the new season riding a wave of momentum, coming off the most-watched Stanley Cup Final on record. The new year also offers the prospect of the return of the Winter Classic and the added exposure of NHL players participating in the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, in February.

NBC Sports, home to gun-control advocate Bob Costas, is sticking with its commitment to be a sponsor of the largest U.S. gun trade show next week, a month after a school shooting in Connecticut killed 20 children. NBC Sports Network will remain the 2013 SHOT Show New Product Center Sponsor, said Greg Hughes, a spokesman for the channel.

The work stoppage, which comes on the heels of the L.A. Kings’ first championship, has chilled momentum at the network’s sports group.

This week’s historic Thanksgiving night broadcast is commanding a staggering per-unit price tag. Seth Winter, EVP, sales and sales marketing, NBC Sports Group: “Every single spot in the game — and I do mean every one of them — has a unit cost of $975,000.”

After seven years as executive producer of the Today show and leading coverage last summer of the London Olympics, Bell heads back to NBC Sports.

In TV rights negotiations with Major League Baseball, Fox has told MLB officials that it not only wants to renew the rights it has now, but also those that Turner has, according to sources. Fox’s wants to use the super-sized package of games to undergird plans to convert Speed into an all-sports network. Fox would continue to put league championship games and World Series on its broadcast network. Fox is not alone in the bidding for rights. Turner and NBC are still in the game.

By refashioning the site as  a general sports programming hub, NBC hopes to hang on to users. The new NBC Sports Live Extra will have live feeds of events airing on multiple NBCUniversal properties, including the NBC Sports Network and Golf Channel.

If anything is taken for granted about the London Olympics, it’s the effort that NBC puts into into producing them for American viewers on multiple channels. Chief tech Dave Mazza says just like the athletes, the NBC techs rely on adrenalin to get them through the 17 days. “Maybe it’s a marathon with a triathlon at the end followed by a 100-yard dash,” he says in this NBC-produced video.

In the Saturday Night Live studio made famous by Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase and Tina Fey, NBC has crammed 11 portable play-by-play booths, a control room and 50 flat-screen computer workstations. “It’s all hands on deck over the 17 days,” says Rick Cordella, SVP of digital media at the NBC Sports Group.

The show, called Sports Illustrated, is set to debut July 24 and is sponsored by Lexus but will include commercials for other advertisers. The magazine, part of Time Warner’s Time Inc. division, and NBC Sports, part of Comcast’s NBC Universal, are sharing production costs and revenue.

Dave Mazza, SVP of engineering for NBC Olympics, is kind of busy right now. He’s overseeing the massive technical preparations so everything’s ready for the July 27 opening ceremonies in London. And while he and his team have years of experience covering the games, there’s always new technology to try out. “We always say that we will always use tried-and-true products to do the Olympics as we can’t afford the risk of something new. Then, when I look at the list of new stuff, it’s staggeringly long. We can’t pull off everything we’re trying to do with the tried and true. It’s just the nature of the beast.”