NBC Sports Network, which launched in 1995, served as the NBCUniversal-owned alternate channel during NBC's portion of NASCAR Cup Series broadcast schedules. NBC originally aired races from 1999 to 2006, returned in 2015, and has been broadcasting races ever since.
After 2021, however, NBC Sports Network shut down, and beginning in 2022, races not shown on NBC during NBC's portion of the schedule were shifted to USA Network. That too remains the case, but will that change in 2026?
USA Network is being spun off from NBC into a new Comcast-formed media company called Versant, and following a recent well-publicized contract dispute between NBCUniversal and YouTube TV, it has been confirmed that NBC Sports Network is set to be revived.
NASCAR back to NBC Sports Network?
Could that move position the network, which had been the primary cable outlet of NBC Sports for not just NASCAR but several other sports, to return to the Cup Series broadcast schedule at some point in the future?
The 2026 season is set to be year number two of the sport's new seven-year, $7.7 billion media rights deal. Both Fox and NBC stayed on after the 10-year deal from 2015 to 2024 expired, but both lost races with the introduction of Amazon Prime Video and the return of TNT Sports for five races each.
Fox dropped from 18 races (16 points races) to 14 (12) to start the year, while NBC dropped from 20 races to 14 to wrap it up. Notably, most of Fox's races had been shown on Fox, but this year, nine of the 14 were on Fox Sports 1 and only five were on Fox. Likewise, after NBC's races had been split evenly between NBC and USA, this year's schedule featured 10 on USA and only four on NBC.
Whether a NASCAR return to NBC Sports Network happens next year is questionable since the initial schedule announcement discussed the fact that NBC is once again scheduled to air four races while USA Network takes care of the other 10.
But no specifics of which races are which have been announced, with the schedule currently listing "NBC Sports" for the final 14 races of the year, and seeing as how USA, along with Golf Channel, Syfy, E!, CNBC, MSNBC, among others, will no longer use the NBC logo, there are still questions about what this means for the future.
Notably, the process of this separation and move to Versant has already begun for these channels, and USA Network's final race on the 2025 Cup Series schedule was this past Sunday's race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway; the season's remaining three races at Talladega Superspeedway, Martinsville Speedway, and Phoenix Raceway are all set to be shown live on NBC.
Whether a race is shown live on NBC or USA Network, the broadcast booth remains the same, with Leigh Diffey serving as the play-by-play announcer and both Jeff Burton and Steve Letarte continuing to serve as analysts. That trio is expected to return in 2026. Will NBC Sports Network be a part of it?