Los Angeles-based Universal Sports Network announced it was moving its production and broadcast operations to the Comcast Media Center.
The move, which is slated to be completed the first of next year, will bring 44 new jobs to the Comcast Media Center (CMC), which is located in a suburb of Denver.
Universal Sports Network, which is a partnership between NBC Sports and InterMedia Partners, specializes in Olympic-related sports programming in the United States. Offering more than 1,200 hours of original programming each year, Universal Sports has exclusive rights to world and national championship events in a wide array of sports, including swimming, track and field, gymnastics, cycling, skiing, figure skating, and rugby. The programming is available in linear, online and mobile formats across various devices.
“Moving our production and broadcast operations to Colorado will create exciting new opportunities for our network,” said David Sternberg, CEO of Universal Sports. “CMC’s advanced technological capabilities, combined with the incentive program offered by the state of Colorado, helped to make our relocation decision an easy one. The proximity of CMC’s facility to many of our distribution partners, advertisers and Olympic sports programming suppliers makes it an ideal location for our production and operations team and will enable us to continue delivering world-class sports programming to our viewers across the country.”
Among its other video capabilities, CMC specializes in live sports origination, managing more than 20,000 HD, SD and 3-D live and recorded events a year.
“Universal Sports Network is a fantastic addition to the Colorado business community, and we’re proud to have been selected to provide many of the video production and network origination services they will require,” said Richard Buchanan, vice president and general manger of content solutions for Comcast Media Center. “We were also very pleased to play a role in Universal Sports’ decision to move its operations to Colorado by offering a highly robust set of video content solutions, demonstrating our market can compete with other service providers based on the coasts and elsewhere in the U.S.”
To help facilitate the move, Universal Sports was awarded a grant by the state of Colorado’s Economic Development Commission as part of the Colorado Film Incentive program, which was designed to attract content creation and packaging in the state.
Universal Sports Network’s list of distribution partners includes national satellite providers DirecTV and Dish as well as Cascade Communications and BendBroadband in Oregon, Wave Broadband markets in California, Oregon and Washington, GCI in Alaska, Hawaiian Telcom, Hiawatha Broadband Communications in Minnesota, MTC Cable in New York, Waitsfield Cable in Vermont and IPTV distributor SkyAngel.
