**Free Olympic-Related Sports Channel Now Reaches 45 Million Households**
By David Monti
(c) 2009 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved
Watching Olympic-related sports on free, over-the-air television just
got easier in the United States as Universal Sports has added 20 new
television markets, pushing their reach to 45 million households. The
all-sports channel is already available in big markets like New York,
Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., but will be
rolled out in the first quarter in Houston, Miami, Seattle, Denver,
Portland, Indianapolis, Salt Lake City and Jacksonville.
"Many of the stars of the Beijing Olympics will continue to excite and
amaze as will the future stars of the Vancouver and London Games, and
the platform to watch these incredible athletes compete as they build
toward the next Games is Universal Sports and UniversalSports.com,"
said NBC Olympics president Gary Zenkel in a prepared statement.
A partnership between NBC Sports and InterMedia Partners, Universal
Sports offers saturation coverage of Olympic-related events which is
simply not available anywhere else. For instance, the recently
concluded Alpine World Ski Championships received over 100 hours of
broadcast time. The network plans to offer coverage from 21 different
world championships this year, including the IAAF World Championships
in Athletics from Berlin, Germany. Moreover, their robust website
allows for even more coverage through video, photos and print.
"We are delivering on the pledge we made to our consumers and partners
when we launched Universal Sports, and we are further solidifying
Universal Sports as the key destination in the U.S. for major national
and international competition in Olympic-related sports," explained
Claude Ruibal, Universal Sports' CEO.
