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NBC’s programming and marketing push for the 2026 Winter Olympics has begun, and the network has two very powerful tools to boost awareness and revenue: the NFL and the NBA.
The countdown to the event, shared by the Italian cities of Milan and Cortina, formally started Wednesday, as NBC broadcast live from the event site for the Today show, and also announced the broad outlines of a programming plan that will include more total coverage than any prior Winter Olympics. The network is undoubtedly expecting a big resurgence for the Winter Olympics, mirroring last summer in Paris, after a 2022 event in Beijing that sank to record-low U.S. ratings. That’s particularly true as next year’s Games offer a much more favorable time-zone difference for U.S. viewers compared to the two prior Winter Olympics in Asia.
“Paris proved that the Olympics are back and remain an unrivaled media property,” said NBC Sports president Rick Cordella. “We expected Milan-Cortina to carry on that legacy. The time zone allows us to mimic our Paris programming and coverage strategy.”
The Olympics, however, will hardly be alone in NBC’s plans for a year from now. The opening ceremony next year will be Feb. 6, two days before the network also broadcasts Super Bowl LX from Santa Clara, Calif. That Olympics–Super Bowl combination is something that NBC previously had in 2018 and 2022, and purposely sought in its current NFL rights deal to also have in 2030. If NBC is able to renew its Olympics media rights that currently expire in 2032, the two-event confluence will additionally happen in 2034.
The Super Bowl–Olympics combination, meanwhile, also allows NBC to mandate that many advertisers of one event also buy time in the other—a formula that helped the network generate nearly $1.5 billion in combined revenue from the pairing in 2022.
Even greater riches likely await NBC next year, particularly after Fox said Wednesday it generated more than $800 million from Super Bowl LIX alone.
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There’s yet another major part of NBC’s early 2026 sports plan: coverage of the NBA All-Star Game on Feb. 15 in Los Angeles. The network gained the rights to the league’s midseason showcase as part of new, 11-year deals announced last summer with NBC, ESPN, and Amazon, and the All-Star Game will be a major part of NBC’s return to the NBA after a 23-year absence.
Such a confluence of major events within a matter of days on a single network is arguably unrivaled in sports broadcasting history.
That situation, in turn, will be a major boost for NBC corporate parent Comcast. The company recently posted a historically strong quarter financially, but it is in the midst of significant change as it sees more lift from content programming instead of distribution and is also spinning off most of its cable networks.
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