Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA Launches Today

Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA - a partnership between the International Olympic Committee, the United States Olympic Committee, and NBCUniversal - will launch in 10 days, on Saturday, July 15. Kicking off programming for the new TV channel, which complements the global digital platform and allows Olympic fans to connect to Olympic Sports, athletes, and stories all year round, is a 30-minute Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA Launch Special hosted by NBC Sports' Mike Tirico, who was named NBC's primetime Olympic host earlier this year.

The special will premiere July 15 at 6 a.m. ET, with several encore presentations throughout the week. It will guide viewers through a preview of what they can expect to see on the new network. The launch show includes:

• A Team USA athlete roundtable with Olympic medalists Shaun White, Kelly Clark and Gus Kenworthy, moderated by Olympic gold medalist Tara Lipinski;
• Previews of the FINA World Swimming Championships and IAAF World Track & Field Championships, which will supply significant programming during the network's first few weeks;
• A preview of upcoming documentaries from the IOC's global Olympic Channel original programming;
• Behind-the-scenes content and social media elements from NBC Olympics' promotional shoot for the upcoming Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018.

Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA 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.

The first month of programming on Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA will be highlighted by extensive coverage of the 2017 FINA World Swimming and Diving Championships from Budapest, Hungary, in July; the IAAF TRACK AND FIELD World Championships from London, England, in August; and the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships from Vienna, Austria, in July and August.

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.

The new linear cable channel will be available in 35 million homes, including most subscribers of Altice, AT&T DirecTV, Comcast, Spectrum, and Verizon at launch. The linear channel will also be available at launch on streaming services, including DIRECTV Now, Fubo, Hulu, Sony Playstation Vue, and Youtube TV.

The extensive Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA programming complements 400 hours of Olympic Sports programming that was already scheduled to air in 2017 on NBC and NBCSN, and streamed on NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports app, as well as on the distributors' on demand and digital platforms.

The formation of Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA was announced in December 2016 as a ground-breaking collaboration between the IOC, USOC, and NBCU to create a comprehensive Olympic content and distribution partnership in the United States. The partnership complements the Olympic Channel global digital platform, which was launched by the IOC following the Closing Ceremony of Rio 2016.

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