NBC Creates Sports Ad Agency Venture with Comcast

Sports fans, get this: NBC Universal is creating a NBC Sports Agency to market the NBC Sports Group and Comcast’s sports channels. The former (and semi-retired) NBC Chief Marketing Office, John Miller, will pull a “Brett Favre” and lead this newly formed group, as reported by The New York Times’ Media Decoder blog.

The NBC Sports Agency will market NBC’s existing sports networks and broadcasts of sporting events, with the agency looking for broader ways for units to work with advertisers, the story says. Furthermore, with regard to its ventures with Comcast, the story says “The ad agency will market all parts of the NBC Sports Group, which will “soon include Comcast’s sports cable channels. Its formation is another indication that Comcast wants to seize opportunities in the sports arena.”

According to the story, Miller says “We are forming this agency to respond to the demand we are already hearing from many advertisers who are looking forward to creating integrated campaigns with our soon-to-be combined assets.”

What does this mean for us multi-media marketing and advertising agencies? More options for our clients? Or, more chaos in the media place? We’ve long since known the leaders of sportscasting to be ESPN, even FOX and CBS pull more weight than NBC in its sports division. Will the media giant offer up innovative advertising and marketing, or merely copy and paste from the giants aforementioned? I, myself am eager to see what’s in store from NBC in this new sports audience initiative.