Altice licenses NBCU Olympics live stream for U.S. cable systems

Altice USA has licensed the full sum of NBCUniversal's (NASDAQ: CMCSA) 6,755 hours of Summer Olympics coverage for its newly acquired Cablevision and Suddenlink Communications customers.

In addition to access to NBCU channels including NBC, NBCSN, Golf Channel, Bravo, CNBC, MSNBC, USA Network, Telemundo, NBC Universo, Cablevision and Suddenlink subscribers can stream via TV Everywhere both live and on-demand coverage of most events through the NBC Sports app. 

Essentially, Comcast/NBCU is opening up the large portion of coverage not shown on its linear networks to TV Everywhere authentication. Only around 2,000 hours of Games coverage will be available through NBCU's linear networks.

How much Altice is paying to license this coverage has not been disclosed. 

NBCU has committed to a record amount of Olympics coverage at the Games of the XXXI Olympiad from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which will run from August 7 to August 21.

NBCU parent Comcast has billed the Games as a coming out event for its X1 platform, which has steadily been adding features to augment live sports for the last several years. 

Altice, which just closed on its Cablevision acquisition, is eager to make a big splash, too, with an Olympics that is on a similar time zone as the U.S.

"The 2016 Rio Summer Olympics will be the biggest Games ever in one of the most spectacular cities, and we are excited to deliver to our Optimum and Suddenlink TV customers NBCUniversal's unparalleled multiplatform coverage of this historic event," said Michael Schreiber, executive VP and chief content officer at Altice USA, in a statement. 

For more:
- read this Altice press release

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