A century ago, NBC’s leaders were quick to recognize the importance of sports as a cornerstone of the fledgling national radio network.
On New Year’s Day 1927, NBC carried the first coast-to-coast live broadcast of a sporting event, the Rose Bowl football game between Stanford and Alabama (which ended in a tie). Top-tier teams, leagues and events, cutting-edge technology and programs that cultivate the fandom around sports have been part of the mix at NBC ever since.
Today, with NBC firmly established as the U.S. home of the Olympics and the biggest of big-league sports (NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and more), the division is guided by a simple philosophy. “How do we entertain people?” says Rick Cordella, president of NBC Sports.
“People look to sports to kind of get away from their day-to-day lives and fall into the drama of a great competition and the storytelling that happens around the athletes and teams and people around the periphery of those sports,” Cordella says. “We always say, ‘How do we make big events bigger?’”
NBC is in the midst of a yearlong celebration of the 100th anniversary of its launch as a radio network on Nov. 15, 1926. Cordella has been thinking about another milestone marked this year, the 20th anniversary of NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” and its companion studio show, “Football Night in America.”
