FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, July 14th, 2017

“OLYMPIC CHANNEL: HOME OF TEAM USA” LAUNCHES TOMORROW

NBC OLYMPICS PRIMETIME HOST MIKE TIRICO, TWO-TIME OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALIST SHAUN WHITE, AND IOC, USOC AND NBCUNIVERSAL EXECUTIVES DISCUSS THE LAUNCH

STAMFORD, Conn. – July 14, 2017 – Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA — a partnership between the International Olympic Committee, the United States Olympic Committee, and NBCUniversal — launches tomorrow, Saturday, July 15.

Click here for the Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA channel finder.

Following are quotes from NBC Olympics primetime host Mike Tirico, two-time Olympic gold medalist Shaun White, and executives Mark Parkman and Yiannis Exarchos (IOC’s global Olympic Channel), Lisa Baird (USOC), and Jim Bell and Gary Zenkel (NBC Olympics), discussing the Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA on a national media conference call yesterday:

Tirico: “Olympians don’t just walk through a door every four years, compete, go back through that door and disappear. They continue their competition, their pursuit of individual excellence or team excellence, and the Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA, will show us that, not just for Team USA, but for other athletes around the world.”

White: “The hurdle that I’m excited about that we can clear is that when you see people compete at the Olympics, win or lose, you get this lull and gap in time when you don’t know what they are up to or what they are doing. Then, all of a sudden, you see them again and you think, ‘Oh, I guess they didn’t retire.’ I am very excited about having a channel to display all those things that I have been up to, and my competitors, I’m sure, will feel the same way.”

Zenkel: “These three parties [the IOC, USOC and NBCUniversal] come together with a common goal of essentially achieving what [IOC President] Thomas Bach’s vision was, which is creating the opportunity for fans to access content, and for those of us that have a stake in this movement, this franchise, to reach out to the fans with great compelling content.”

Bell: “This is not about embracing debate. It’s about embracing our partners, with the IOC, the USOC and the Federations. It’s about embracing the athletes at an even earlier stage than we do now, and about embracing sports; in many cases, sports that could use some embracing.”

Parkman: “Saturday is one of the major milestones of our Olympic Channel evolution when we come with a linear channel launch in the USA in partnership with our wonderful partners. This is the next step in what we have envisioned to be a global digital platform that takes it to a more localized level here in the States in partnership with NBC and the USOC to give people an amazing content experience through global content origination, the live events that NBC will have, the events that the USOC will have.”

Exarchos: “The starting point of this channel was actually those ‘Monday blues,’ the blues you get the Monday after the end of every Olympic Games, where we all start missing this extraordinary atmosphere, this extraordinary coming together of the greatest athletes of the world. The story that we felt compelled to try and tell is the period in between the Games, because in today’s world, you simply cannot wait two or four years between the different Games to celebrate that. This unique experience needs to become part of our daily life simply because we believe that the Olympics is not just about sports. We believe that there is a message there that’s relevant to our lives, especially today, and it’s relevant to making our lives and the world better.”

Baird: “It exponentially increases not only the coverage that you heard about, but the ability to produce and bring great content, competition, and storytelling immediately. That’s the biggest benefit.”

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OLYMPIC CHANNEL: HOME OF TEAM USA LAUNCH SPECIAL – TOMORROW, SATURDAY, JULY 15, AT 6 A.M. ET

Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA Launch Special, a 30-minute program hosted by NBC Sports’ Mike Tirico, will include a Team USA athlete roundtable with Olympic medalists Shaun WhiteKelly Clark and Gus Kenworthy, moderated by Olympic gold medalist Tara Lipinski; and preview the FINA World Aquatics Championships and IAAF World Track & Field Championships, which will supply significant programming during the network’s first few weeks. Click here for more details on the special.


ABOUT OLYMPIC CHANNEL: HOME OF TEAM USA

Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA is a partnership between the International Olympic Committee, the United States Olympic Committee, and NBCUniversal. The new TV network will offer fans year-round programming of Olympic Sports from around the world, highlighting their favorite American athletes and teams. Programming will emphasize live events from a broad portfolio of summer and winter Olympic Sports. It will also include Olympic-themed original content produced by all three parties, such as original programs produced by filmmakers from around the world commissioned by the global Olympic Channel; rich archival footage from the IOC and NBCU’s libraries of Olympic features and documentaries; and original Team USA programming produced by the USOC that provides authentic, wide-ranging and athlete-focused coverage of the Olympic Movement in the United States. Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA will be live streamed on OlympicChannel.com, the Olympic Channel app, NBCSports.com, and the NBC Sports app. Select replays and highlights will be available on these digital platforms as well as TeamUSA.org.

–OLYMPIC CHANNEL: HOME OF TEAM USA–