NBA legend Michael Jordan will appear as a special correspondent on NBCUniversal‘s coverage of the league when it begins its long-term rights deal in this fall.
Drawing cheers from the crowd at Radio City Music Hall on Monday morning, NBCU featured the news in a prominent segment of its upfront presentation to advertisers. Mimicking the famous press release Jordan released when he un-retired from baseball and rejoined the NBA in the 1990s, the company flashed a mock press release on video screens at Radio City saying simply, “I’m back.”
Jordan then appeared in a brief video. “Sorry I can’t be with you,” he said. “I am excited about being a special contributor. … Looking forward to seeing you all when the NBA on NBC launches this fall.”
Now more than 20 years removed from his playing career, Jordan has stayed involved in pro sports as an owner, but has not been a constant presence around the NBA. Unlike contemporaries like Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal, Jordan has stayed at a remove from the league he helped popularize in the 1980s and ’90s. The six-time NBA champion re-entered the pop-culture zeitgeist in 2020 when ESPN’s docuseries about Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, The Last Dance, became a pandemic phenomenon.
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No details were provided by NBCU about Jordan’s on-air role.
“It doesn’t get any more electrifying than that,” lead sports anchor Mike Tirico said after the video announcement, which was preceded by an orchestral version of NBA on NBC theme “Roundball Rock,” led by its composer, John Tesh.
Tirico saluted Jordan as a “symbol of the golden era of NBC’s coverage of the NBA from 1990 to 2002.”
NBCU and Amazon Prime Video joined Disney/ESPN last year in signing 11-year rights deals with the NBA worth a collective $77 billion. Warner Bros. Discovery, whose networks have shown NBA games for nearly 40 years, opted not to re-up.
