On Feb. 6, the 2026 Winter Olympics will kick off a flurry of NBC Sports programming that the network is branding as "Legendary February." The lineup, which includes Super Bowl LX, Winter Olympics and the NBA All-Star Game, signals a recent strategy shift inside NBCUniversal.

NBCUniversal is concentrating its programming around major live sports events, with February featuring the Winter Olympics, Super Bowl, NBA All-Star Game, and a marquee Lakers vs. Celtics game. This approach, branded as 'Legendary February,' marks a significant shift from NBC's historical focus on scripted television, such as 'Seinfeld' and 'The Office.'

The network's strategy is influenced by the evolving media landscape, where companies like Netflix and Amazon have greater financial resources. NBCUniversal has chosen to invest in live sports to maintain relevance and viewership, as highlighted by the strong ratings for events like Sunday Night Football.

Why NBCUniversal is all in on sports

I'm not sure there's ever been a month in media and sports quite like what we're going to see in February in terms of the amount of content on one individual network. It all starts February 6th, that's when the Winter Olympics Opening Ceremonies kicks off on NBC Sports. Just two days after the Opening Ceremonies is the Super Bowl, the most watched event on all TV every single year and that's also on NBC Sports. A week later, NBC has the NBA All-Star Game. Again, another giant marquee event typically that a sports network would be promoting for months. That's also overlapping with the Winter Olympics. This all ends on February 22nd with the Closing Ceremonies and that day, NBC has probably the most marquee regular season basketball game every year, the Los Angeles Lakers against the Boston Celtics. NBC is calling this Legendary February and it's sort of a microcosm for what NBC's strategy has turned into. If you think back to what NBC used to be in the mid-90s and early 2000s, really the calling card for the entertainment company was its scripted television, both dramas and comedies. Think about Must See TV, Seinfeld, Friends, Frasier, ER. And then into the 2000s, there were still many scripted hits on NBC. You can think about The Office or This Is Us. These were consistently some of the highest rated programmings on television. That has changed, particularly in recent years where the media ecosystem has changed around NBC. So really it's no fault of NBC's, but you think about now who are the biggest players in media, it used to be CBS, Fox, now it's Netflix, YouTube, Apple, Amazon. These companies have much bigger balance sheets than NBC. So NBC has kind of had to choose here, they've had to pick a lane. You could either invest in sports or you can invest in scripted entertainment, but it's harder to do both. And so clearly all you need to do is follow the money. NBC has gone in the sports direction to be a live sports first entertainment company. Now I posed this hypothesis to Comcast co-CEO Mike Kavanaugh, who's really been the de facto leader of NBC for several years now. And I said, do you agree with this hypothesis that NBC is now a sports first entertainment company? And he said, oh no, no, have you seen St. Dennis Medical? Have you seen Stumble? And to be honest, I haven't seen either of those shows. I hadn't even heard of Stumble. And I think that's a little bit telling that all you need to do is look at the ratings. I mean, Sunday Night Football gets about 25 million people that watches that every week. The fact of the matter is it's just a small media company these days, and so it needs to choose a lane, and so NBC has chosen sports.

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