Notre Dame and NBC Sports to remain broadcast partners through 2029
Before the 2023 season started, one of the hottest conversations concerning Notre Dame athletics centered on who the Fighting Irish would agree to terms with as a broadcast partner with the current NBC contract expiring soon. That cooled once games took hold of the spotlight, but the issue has finally been resolved prior to the penultimate game of the season.
It’s been Notre Dame on NBC since 1991, and it’s still going to be Notre Dame on NBC though 2029.
The university announced an extension of a relationship of over three decades half an hour before No. 19 Notre Dame (7-3) kicked off against Wake Forest (4-6) in South Bend on Saturday. Director of athletics Jack Swarbrick said he’s thrilled to continue the “historic collaboration” with NBC.
“In the next generation of this partnership, we will collaborate to provide our fans even more Notre Dame content through a variety of NBCUniversal’s distribution channels while continuing to put our student-athletes and their stories at the heart of our messaging,” Swarbrick said in a statement. “I want to give special thanks to the leadership of Comcast and NBCUniversal for their continued belief in this historic partnership.”
Dollar figures for the terms of the deal were not released by the university. However, the press release did specify that “revenues from the partnership have played a key role in Notre Dame’s financial aid endowment since the start of the relationship in 1991 when University officers allocated a portion of the football television contract revenue for undergraduate scholarship endowment (not athletic scholarships).” The release stated Notre Dame undergraduate students have received over $100 million in aid from revenue generated by partnering with NBC.
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Enough monetary gain by the athletic department itself should help Notre Dame remain independent as a football program despite a turbulent reality outside of South Bend in terms of conference realignment. At times, people pondered if the Irish would secure a significant TV rights contract to ensure independence. That doesn’t seem to be a worry through the 2020s. Swarbrick said in Saturday’s pregame show independence is in good shape with the new deal.
It’s been a successful season for Notre Dame on NBC, too. Broadcasts are averaging 5.1 million viewers in 2023, which is the largest single-season audience through five games since 2005 and up 86 percent from this time last year. The Ohio State vs. Notre Dame game averaged 10.6 million viewers, ranking as the second-most watched college football game of all time only behind the No. 2 Irish taking on the No. 1 Florida State Seminoles in the 1993 “Game of the Century.”
“There is no better tradition than Notre Dame football in South Bend, and we are thrilled to keep that tradition within the NBC Sports family as we extend our relationship as the exclusive home of Fighting Irish home games through the end of the decade,” NBC Sports president Rick Cordella said.
