NBC, World Championship Sports Network in New Partnership

NEW YORK/LOS ANGELES, June
17: NBC Sports has teamed with World Championship Sports Network (WCSN) to
create Universal Sports, a multiplatform destination for Olympic sports
programming that will include both a television network and an online platform,
UniversalSports.com.

WCSN will rebrand itself
as Universal Sports prior to the 2008 Beijing Summer Games. The new partnership
will kick off this Thursday, June 19, and Friday, June 20, with live
early-round coverage of the Olympic Trials for gymnastics and diving,
respectively, on Universal Sports. Previously, these early-round competitions
have not had a platform on which they can be viewed.

As part of the
transaction, NBCU will become a significant shareholder in WCSN and will
jointly control WCSN with InterMedia Partners. The WCSN management team,
including chairman and CEO Claude Ruibal and president Carlos Silva, will
continue to manage the company.

“Universal Sports will
provide a terrific year-round home to almost all Olympic sports and the athletes
who give our viewers such compelling stories,” said Dick Ebersol, the chairman
of NBC Universal Sports and Olympics.

“We invested in WCSN
because we believe that Olympic sports have a large and passionate following
and other than NBCU; WCSN was the most responsible steward for this audience,”
added Leo Hindery, Jr., the managing partner of InterMedia Partners. “It is a
privilege and delight to see WCSN and NBCU now come together as partners, and
the clear winners today are the fans of Olympic sports and the very sports
themselves.”

“WCSN is the leading
rights holder of Olympic sports programming in between each Olympic Games
offering fans comprehensive coverage of skiing, swimming, track and field,
gymnastics, and more than 40 other Olympic sports disciplines,” concluded
WCSN’s Ruibal. “Under the new Universal Sports name, and with NBCU as a
partner, the combined business will be the undisputed home of Olympic sports
across all distribution platforms and will provide these sports and their
athletes a real opportunity to get the consistent exposure they deserve across
the USA.”

—By Irene Lew