Comcast streaming service Peacock will have exclusive coverage of Notre Dame football’s home opener as part of the company’s push to use sports to get more people to sign up and use Peacock.
Notre Dame will be playing Toledo on Sept .11. The rest of Notre Dame’s home games will be streamed on Peacock and broadcast on NBC.
NBC Sports acquired the broadcast rights to Notre Dame football in 1991. This is the first time a game can only be watched via streaming.
“Peacock exemplifies how we’re innovating as a company, and Notre Dame has consistently been a tremendous partner in making progressive choices for sports programming,” said Pete Bevacqua, chairman, NBC Sports.
Comcast and NBCUniversal have been streaming big chunks of the Olympics to get viewers to use Peacock. Peacock has featured a number of other sports events, including the Stanley Cup Final.
Last week, Comcast announced that Peacock had 54 million sign-ups and 20 million active users, a 50% gain. The streaming service lost $363 million in the second quarter on revenue of $122 million.
“Fighting Irish TV and Peacock shows the evolution of how media is consumed by our fans and television viewers, alike,” said Notre Dame VP James E. Rohr and Director of Athletics Jack Swarbrick. “We want to provide a great experience to not only our fans who travel around the world to cheer us on, but also to our supporters who are either cable subscribers or ‘cord-cutters,’ and these two streaming platforms do just that. I see no better example of this than Peacock’s success in delivering fans wall-to-wall content during the Tokyo Olympics.”
This season will mark former Purdue and NFL star quarterback Drew Brees’ debut as a game analyst for Notre Dame games on NBC. Mike Tirico will do play-by-play and Kathryn Tappen will be the reporter on the sidelines.
