Telemundo Deportes Ahora, a new 24/7 Spanish-language sports FAST channel, launched on Thursday and it promises to include a wide variety of programming targeting the Spanish language sports market in the U.S., including:
- 50+ hours of new Spanish-language sports content weekly
- Live sporting events including, Básquetbol LATAM, NFL, Super Bowl, NBA, select MMA events, Bare-Knuckle Boxing, and Pro-Paddle League
- Shoulder programming around Premier League, FIFA properties (including FIFA World Cup 2026™), U.S. Soccer (men’s, women’s, and youth teams), and top Liga MX clubs like Chivas, Tigres, and Juárez
- Original programming including Telemundo Deportes Al Día, Puesta a Punto, and El Pelotazo Ahora
I had the opportunity on Thursday to speak with Telemundo's SVP of Sports Content, Miguel Lorenzo about the launch. It included a wide-ranging discussion about the strategy behind the channel, the challenge of FAST viewing metrics and the ways the network plans to integrate promotions between the linear and FAST channels in the future.
The interview has been lightly edited for clarity:
I know it's hard with a FAST channel to figure out what the audience is ultimately going to be, but as you were planning this, who did you hope would be the viewers that would be most attracted to this?
So we're hoping it's going to be a combination, right? We were hoping that existing audiences for Telemundo Deportes on our linear platforms, our streaming and social platforms, we're hopeful that they're going to find this content as well on a new platform on this FAST channel. But we absolutely also hope that we're reaching new audiences on FAST.
It's a different type of experience. It's kind of like a linear experience, more relaxed, more sit down, but it's on a digital platform. So whether you call them cord cutters or just people that want a different type of way to watch their content, we're certainly expecting to reach new audiences, which is ultimately the goal, right?
We're increasing the audience for Telemundo Deportes and reaching as many people as we can.
One of the interesting aspects of a FAST channel is the viewing can often be more impulsive than on a linear channel. They're just stumbling across the channel or decide to watch it without having a clear sense of what will be on. So how do you deal with the challenge of random discovery as opposed to a linear channel, where they generally know that a specific event is going to be on at a specific time?
I think it'll be a combination because one of the important parts of our strategy is live sports and live programming in general. We're going to have a lot of live sports in this channel, a lot of live shows that we'll be producing here at Telemundo Center. And so anytime you have live, you hope that it eventually becomes appointment viewing.
But to your point, we're not expecting to change the consumption pattern of everybody on FAST. There is a lot of just, whatever's on, let me watch it. And so the way that we're programming the channel is reflective of that as well.
There are a lot of re-airs, but programmed in a very strategic way. Different windows, taking into account our audiences. We're focused on U.S. Hispanics. That's our audience.
That's our core. And so you have a lot of them dispersed around different places, whether it's East Coast, West Coast, that means differences in time zones. So that's all being taken into account in how we program the channel.
How are you dealing with the cross-promotion challenges of taking someone who's on the FAST channel and pushing them to the linear side and vice versa?
Yeah, it's an important strategy. We want to make this a 360 experience, regardless of what platform we end up speaking to a user on. So we start with our linear shows.
We are going to have FAST channel extensions of many of our linear shows, and there'll be promotion of that content, of that programming, on our linear platform. So once the show's over, it might be at some point within the show, letting them know, "Hey, for a continuation of this, for more of this particular show, head to our FAST channel right now, because we're going to keep talking there about whatever the discussion might be." And then on the FAST channel, same thing.
We'll have programming in FAST. We'll take Premier League, for example. Premier League is one of the important properties of NBCUniversal, both in English and in Spanish.
We'll have the matches in Spanish on many platforms, Peacock, Telemundo, and we plan to have a lot of Premier League type of programming in the FAST channel. And that's going to be an opportunity for us to promote. If we're talking midweek and we're having a show promoting the upcoming matches, like Premier League kicking off this weekend, we'll take that opportunity to mention, and here are all the matchups taking place this weekend on Telemundo, on Universal, on Peacock, that you can watch.
So we really are looking at it as a way, wherever we touch you, in terms of platform, we want to give you awareness for all the other platforms that this content can be found.
So how does social media fit into this?
Social media is part of it as well. So if we stick with the Premier League example, we use social media to create awareness for tune-in and promotion of our matches, but we're absolutely creating content for Premier League and all of our other properties on social media as well. So there's going to be a couple of different components to our strategy with digital and social and where content that airs on the FAST channel, there'll be certain moments that we'll be clipping that and posting it on digital and social to amplify its reach.
And in the same vein, we'll also be promoting a particular FAST show on social media. This is what's airing tonight at 7 p.m. Be sure to watch it there. So every single platform plays an important role in this effort.
How do you deal with the unique challenge of the FAST channel marketplace in which you don't just turn on the FAST channel and it's everywhere? You have to go through separate negotiations with Roku or Pluto or any of the other FAST channel platforms. Do you have an ideal timeline for when you would like to get to point of mass distribution?
We definitely want to be on as many platforms as possible. That's the plan. As you mentioned, for some platforms, it's going to take a little bit more time.
And until we get to that point where we're basically on all the platforms that we can be on at that moment, it's really an effort of informing the audience. For launch, we're on these platforms. As we get confirmation that we're going to be on Xumo, for example, or Roku or any other platform, it's then creating that awareness through marketing efforts, through editorial efforts that we control within the programming, within the platforms. Letting viewers know that starting on X date, Telemundo de Puertas Ahora will also be available on X platform.
And it's really just continuing that awareness until we get to a place where we're on all the platforms we want to be.
Anytime you launch something new like this, it's going to be looking different six months from now or a year from now than it does at launch. I'm curious, how do you measure success short term and medium term for the channel?
So I think we measure it a couple of ways. We are launching with over 50 hours per week of original content. Again, that's a combination of live sports, live shows, original content.
And as you mentioned, we don't envision a year from now having only 50 hours of original content per week. We want to grow the type of properties that we have for FAST. We want to grow the content.
We certainly want to grow the audience. So we envision that as time passes, we'll be able to produce more content. We look at that as a measure of success.
The more content we're able to acquire and produce, that we measure as success. And then also it's consumption, right? And consumption, as you well know, is a bit tricky or has some challenges on the FAST platform.
Every platform is different, different metrics, different cadences. So we use what is available to us. And hopefully, as time progresses, and we have seen some advances in the measurement area of FAST channels.
But hopefully, as time continues to progress, we see more standardization. We will see additional insights that are made available to partners like us that allow us to better measure our audience, our consumption, which to your point, allows us to measure success.
Speaking of success, I suspect that if this FAST channel is a success, that allows you to start programming as different things. Programming that isn't so popular on linear, but resonates with a streaming audience. It would allow you to have programming that you couldn't have if you were just relying on a linear audience.
Yeah, 100%. This FAST channel gives us the opportunity to have so many different computations. So whether it's something that we air on linear, and we want to present it differently on FAST, or maybe it's something that we don't have the space on the linear grid, and we think it's a really good property, we can put it on the FAST channel.
Maybe it's more of a niche sport, something that doesn't work for linear, but is more of a digital, more of a FAST play. This really gives us an opportunity, not only to connect with the audience 24-7 because of the nature of the channel, but it gives us more opportunities to experiment with different platforms to maximize content for platforms that we already have.
And I go back to Premier League again, but it applies to our League MX teams. It applies to so many things. But Premier League is such an amazing partner, and they, along with us, create so much content week-to-week, in season and even off-season, that it's impossible to use all of this content just on Telemundo because you just don't have the windows on linear.
Historically, we use a lot of it on digital, and social, and different opportunities, but FAST is another platform now that we can maximize what already is within our portfolio.
When you sat down for the first couple of meetings thinking about this FAST channel, what did you think was going to be the biggest challenge, and what turned out to be maybe one of the bigger challenges?
I think one of the biggest challenges we initially thought would be, okay, we know that live is going to be very important for us. What are going to be the ways that we're able to format our windows, and our ad windows, and our ad loads to live sports?
Historically, FAST channels are programmed in a very, I don't want to say simple way, but in a very streamlined way, where if it's just episodic content of Lassie or what have you, you know how long the episodes are, you know how many episodes you have, it's pretty simple to program that for a long runway. When you're talking about a sports FAST channel, we don't want to have the same type of programming every day and every week. We want it to vary because we have different sports, because the nature of sports, things change, priorities change, it's the seasonality of content.
We want to be able to program this in a very dynamic way. Even if we have breaking news, we want to be able to change our programming that same day. So, I would say heading into it, we thought that might be a challenge because we want to give ourselves as much flexibility to program effectively as possible.
But I think as we worked through the setup of the channel, working with our various, you know, departments and teams within NBCUniversal, we've been able to find creative ways to account for this. And as you mentioned earlier, it's only going to get better as the channel evolves, as there's more time on the platform. But that's the one that stands out to me.
Then obviously there are the challenges that we've talked about, metrics and how that impacts our ability to better monetize. We need a lot more insights in order to best monetize. And that will continue to evolve with the industry.
You mentioned live programming. I'm curious, obviously on the linear channel, if there's some big breaking news, you can just flip a switch and start covering it. What's the ability to turn that around on a FAST channel? What's the time lag for getting live coverage out there?
We're able to do that on FAST as well. It all comes down also to priority. Depending on how big it is, we might be breaking on linear. And that might take priority or it might be both simultaneous on linear and FAST. But the systems have been set up in a way that it's not a matter of days, maybe not even hours.
It might be just a matter of minutes, assuming it's taking place within a window that we're staffed, but there's breaking news during the day. We can adjust programming, slide things, adjust programming for the rest of the day to prioritize whatever might be breaking in that moment.
I don't want to give you more work, but obviously if this is a success, the natural inclination would be to roll out a second FAST channel. Is this something you've thought about already?
Absolutely. I don't even want to say it's a great problem to have. It's not a problem. That would be a great opportunity to have. And I think we can get to that type of possibility with the acquisition of more sports and more property. Certainly right now we're focused on the channel that we're launching.
We have a lot of important properties, not only for the rest of 2025, but looking ahead in 2026, we have the World Cup. That's going to help bring us a lot of opportunities and a lot of volume opportunities with the content we can create leading up to and during. We have the start of the NBA season now in October, but for Telemundo, our Telemundo matches on NBA will be next February.
We have the Super Bowl. So there's a lot of major tentpoles and there's a lot of sports that we have within the overall ecosystem that I think eventually will give us enough volume to say we can look to expand to FAST even more.
