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NBCUniversal Plans Sports Documentary Film Division

27/05/2015 8:30pm

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By Matthew Futterman 

In an effort to compete with ESPN and HBO, Comcast Corp.'s NBCUniversal is launching a sports documentary film division.

The unit, which will be part of NBC Sports Group, will have a strong Olympics bent and use staff from the Emmy-award winning Olympics division. NBCUniversal has committed almost $8 billion to the International Olympic Committee for the U.S. media rights to the Olympic Games through 2032.

The new division will also produce documentaries about other sports, capitalizing on partnerships NBCUniversal has with organizations such as the National Hockey League, Nascar and Notre Dame football.

Its first film project, a profile of former NHL star and recovering drug addict Derek Sanderson, will air June 8, following Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Finals.

NBC Sports plans to use in-house talent to produce the documentaries. That approach is different from both Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN and Time Warner Inc.'s HBO, which now usually contract with established filmmakers on their projects. HBO Sports, which produced more than 75 documentaries beginning in the 1990s, closed its in-house documentary production unit after 2011. ESPN, which has achieved notoriety for its "30 for 30" series, has worked with such noted filmmakers as Spike Lee, John Singleton and Errol Morris in producing more than 150 documentaries of varying length.

Mark Levy, senior vice president for original productions at the NBC Sports Group, said he plans to produce four films a year that will be shown on the cable channel NBC Sports Network and may also appear on Comcast's 11 regional sports networks.

While the films will provide relatively inexpensive programming, the move is unlikely to produce direct revenue for the NBC Sports Group in the near future. In the past, HBO and ESPN were able to sell DVDs of their documentaries, though that business has largely dried up.

"As time moves on, our digital, social media and business development people will look at opportunities to share this content," Mr. Levy said.

ESPN receives payments from Netflix for its films, though the content is largely intended to build value for the network, which costs cable operators about $6 a month per subscriber, according to media research firm SNL Kagan. NBC Sports Network receives a fraction of that, or about 31 cents a month for each subscriber from cable operators, though it is often sold as part of a suite of Comcast-owned networks.

Write to Matthew Futterman at matthew.futterman@wsj.com

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