NBC Sports Network is being shut down even though it's still pretty popular

The New York Times

Airing everything from NASCAR to Major League Soccer to The Stanley Cup Final and IndyCar, NBCSN's viewership is bigger than FS1 and ESPN2. So that news today that NBCSN is shutting down by the end of the year, with its content moving to USA and Peacock, is surprising. "Sports fans know the network for its heavy coverage of the N.H.L., English Premier League soccer and NASCAR. For three weeks every other year, it has hosted Olympics coverage nonstop, and in off-years it sustained Olympic sports like track and field and cycling," explains The New York Times' Kevin Draper. "NBCSN is still quite popular and generates plenty of revenue. It was the second most viewed cable sports channel in 2020, behind only ESPN and ahead of FS1 and ESPN2. The channel is available in 76.6 million homes, each of which pays 42 cents per month for it, according to Kagan, a media research group within S&P Global Market Intelligence. That means NBCSN is on track to earn more than $380 million in revenue this year, even before advertising is taken into account. But the future of television is streaming, and Comcast is determined not to be left behind."