Claude Ruibal

We have reached a major milestone in our company, announcing earlier this month the launch of Universal Sports in partnership with NBC Universal and, more specifically, with NBC Sports. A couple of recent articles in the New York Times caught my attention, and I wanted to share some thoughts.

One was a story by George Vecsey about Dick Ebersol, the Chairman of NBC Universal Sports and Olympics, and his early days working on the Olympic games as an assistant to Jim McKay. Universal Sports will now have the good fortune to take advantage of the substantial skills, knowledge and relationships that Dick Ebersol and the NBC Sports team have established to help us further grow our network capabilities.

We have already seen some of this early support from a number of members of the NBC Sports team, particularly from David Michaels, who has worked tirelessly together with the team at Andrita ? our broadcast production facility? to help us launch the Universal Sports branded TV channel.� The network went live on June 16 at 6 a.m. throughout the greater New York area, more than doubling our distribution in one day.� It also went live today in Los Angeles, so in the two weeks since announcing our partnership with NBC, Universal Sports Television is now available in over 13 million households, making all our great programming and the athletes that compete in these events that much more accessible to the millions of fans of these sports.

Being live in the cable digital households in the two biggest DMA�s in the United States is very significant for us, but also it means lots of people will be watching us, both enjoying and analyzing our product. We need to make sure we deliver on the promise to our consumers and advertisers to achieve success.

The second article was about Jim McKay, one of the most famous Olympic sports journalists of our time and the former voice of ABC�s Wide World of Sports, a show I grew up with and admired greatly. The show helped influence our decision to develop a 24/7 network for U.S. consumers to experience many of the sports that Wide World of Sports used to cover for one hour once a week.

Our coverage and the success of our network will depend on presenting our consumers with entertaining and compelling programming, complemented by good journalism. We must provide good coverage of our sports but also?just as importantly?provide our audience with the information about these sports and their athletes that will help them fully appreciate the stories we are showing them.

We have every opportunity to succeed. Together we have made great progress to get us to where we are today, and with NBCU as our partner, Universal Sports will deliver high-quality programming that I have no doubt will provide our viewers with �the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.�� We have already started this with great coverage of the Olympic Trials. All of the events have been beautifully produced by the NBC Sports team and there have been many compelling moments so far and lots more to come.

In the coming weeks, we will provide more news about our partnership with NBCU. We invite you to stay tuned and join us for what promises to be a pioneering journey into the dynamic world of Olympic sports and other activities that help shape our sports universe.

We have consistently worked to champion the many underleveraged sports and their athletes that together form the sports program for the Olympic movement, and despite strong fan and participant support, they have lacked the support they deserve from the media and advertising community in the U.S.

We are working hard to make these sports relevant and provide our fans a depth of interaction not offered anywhere else with the ability to hear from coaches, trainers, family, friends, equipment manufacturers and the athletes themselves about how they become swifter, faster and stronger. Through our aggregation of Olympic sports rights and delivery on multiple platforms, we hope we can effectively surround our fans with consistently compelling content and other unique offerings that can enrich their lives by providing them the ability to consume and understand these sports and their athletic heroes in a way that has never been effectively offered before.

It is our aspiration at Universal Sports to go beyond merely entertaining our viewers but inspiring them to be better at what they love to do or at minimum enhance their appreciation for what they love to watch.