CNBC Sport to Launch Weekly Video Show, Branded Productions

CNBC Sport is expanding its sports business brand into television with a new weekly sports business show and the launch of branded productions taking place over the coming weeks. The linear television program, which is titled CNBC Sport: On The Record, will feature interviews with sports business executives and industry newsmakers starting on Saturday, March 29. Interviews that are filmed for the company’s video podcast are going to be repurposed for this weekly series, which is also serving as the basis of the forthcoming show.

The company will also be releasing its first longform CNBC Sport-branded production that will feature Golden State Warriors superstar guard Stephen Curry and focus on his off-court ventures. The crew followed Curry around for NBA All-Star Weekend in San Francisco, Calif. and also conducted an extended interview that took place on a boat. In an interview with Alex Weprin of The Hollywood Reporter, CNBC Sport reporter Alex Sherman divulged that the idea for the CNBC Sport division as a whole came from CNBC president KC Sullivan.

“His pitch was, ‘Look, sports is like a very large investable asset now,’” Sherman recalled. “….But in addition to that, the people that are the owners of these teams are largely already on CNBC, and so we talk to them about the markets, or whatever their main business is, and then we shoehorn in a sports question or two when they’re up on air. We’ve shoehorned it in the past to some degree so his idea was like, ‘Look, this is already here. We should have a platform for all this where we really dive in, because there’s so much appetite for it, and there’s so much crossover with what we do.’”

In addition to these content enterprises, CNBC Sport is also going to hold its first branded live event in early April looking at the business of women’s basketball. Max Meyers, vice president and senior executive producer of strategic verticals and audience development, explained that there is an appeal to sports being appointment-style viewing that has concurrently inflated the value of franchises. CNBC recognized the interest in sports business and has been able to leverage its proficiency and expertise in building out this new area of focus.

“[Sports] has brought a torrent of money from all around the world, whether it be from sovereign wealth funds, whether it be from private equity funds, whether it be from other types of Wall Street type, traditional investment houses into this space,” Meyers said. “And as a result of that, there’s a lot of money going back and forth. CNBC tells the story of money better than any network or any news outlet in all of its forms, so it made sense that we did it.”

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