NBC Will Heat Up Its NBA Coverage to Boost Peacock

NBC Sports is using this fall’s return of the NBA to the network after a 23-year absence to take its sports streaming on Peacock in new directions.

NBA games on the streaming service will be made available with enhanced features such as live game action, scores, and statistics directly on the Peacock home page; real-time overlays of player stats and shot probabilities relying in part on augmented reality; and prediction gaming embedded into the live video. 

Additionally, NBC Sports plans to introduce later in the 2025–2026 season a “Courtside Live” feature that provides several curated alternate camera angles, such as dedicated views on star players and team arrivals that spotlight fashion. “Courtside Live” will also have supplemental content celebrating the culture of the NBA, such as in-arena celebrity reactions to key game moments. Customized multiviews, introduced last year during the Paris Olympics, will also be available for the NBA games on Peacock.

While some of these interactive elements have a foundation in other top sports programming on Peacock, such as the Olympics, Sunday Night Football, and the Premier League, the facets of the NBA initiative collectively represent significant new ground for live sports on the platform. Network officials detailed the NBA streaming plans Monday morning at an upfront presentation to advertisers in New York.

“The goal is to create the most engaging experience for not only avid fans but also for casual fans,” said NBCUniversal SVP of product and user experience John Jelley. “It’s built for casual fans who want to understand what’s possible, and active fans who want to see more than just the scores. We see this as basketball brought to life with some real-time intelligence.”

NBC Sports’s NBA plans, particularly the graphic overlays, also have some similarities to the analytics-based alternate presentation of the NFL’s Thursday Night Football on Amazon. 

The new Peacock features add to NBC Sports’s recent deal with composer John Tesh to bring back the celebrated “Roundball Rock” theme song. The network’s 11-year, $27.5 billion deal, blending this streaming with a significant presence on broadcast television, was a key part of the league’s new set of national media-rights agreements. 

Peacock, meanwhile, had 41 million subscribers as of the end of the first quarter, as corporate parent Comcast continues to lean more on sports as part of its overall strategy.