It’s been a very successful debut season for Premier League on NBC. Record ratings, almost universal critical adoration and a compelling year in English football. They’ve had almost everything go their way.
NBCUniversal is capping that off with what they’re calling “Championship Sunday” on May 11th. The final day of the Premier League season features all 20 teams playing at the same time on one Sunday. The networks of NBC will cover all of them, every single one, live.
Because of the Spanish Grand Prix, CNBC will kick off the network’s final day coverage with Premier League Live at 9 a.m. ET. At 10 a.m. ET, the following networks will all televise a Premiere League match:
- NBC
- NBCSN
- USA
- CNBC
- MSNBC
- Bravo
- SyFy
- Esquire
- E!
- Oxygen
- Telemundo
- mun2
That means every single game will have a (fairly) widely distributed broadcast, while two will also be available in Spanish (in case you’re wondering how 20 teams playing 10 games fit into 12 networks). At Noon ET, NBC and NBCSN will simulcast a post-game, season wrap-up edition of Premier League Live. Rebecca Lowe, Robbie Mustoe and Robbie Earle will be the talent as usual.
It’s pretty likely that the three biggest networks involved in coverage (NBC, NBCSN and CNBC) seem destined to grab games featuring the three serious title contenders — Liverpool, Chelsea and Manchester City. It’ll also be interesting to see how NBC handles teams facing the threat of relegation. Not only may Chelsea be fighting for a title, Cardiff City (their opponents) will be desperate to avoid being dropped to the Championship.
Of course, Manchester United are always enough of a draw to deserve a decent TV spot, but is them merely fighting to make a Europa League qualifier deserving of a big network? There’s plenty of decisions for NBC to make between now and the 11th, but it’s exciting to see that they’re living up to their commitment of making the final day of the Premier League season a huge event and carrying on what has become a pretty cool television tradition by showing every game of the final day live.
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