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NBC Sports chief Pete Bevacqua is leaving NBCUniversal to tackle a brand new function because the athletic director on the University of Notre Dame, marking the second exit of a serious govt from the Comcast-owned media large since the ouster of former CEO Jeff Shell.

Bevacqua, who has performed a big hand in steering NBCU’s sports activities efforts into digital arenas, will keep till the tip of June, staffers had been instructed in a memo Thursday. Executives at NBC Sports are anticipated to report back to Mark Lazarus, the NBCU govt who as soon as ran NBC Sports and at present oversees the entire firm’s TV and streaming operations.

“Anyone who knows Pete will tell you that other than his family, Notre Dame is his next greatest love, and now he has been given the opportunity to have a huge impact on their storied sports programs and the institution in general,” Lazarus mentioned in a press release. He characterised the chance as a “dream job” for Bevacqua.

Bevacqua leaves as NBCU is making an attempt to maneuver extra of its sports activities portfolio into the digital realm. While NBC is thought for its “Sunday Night Football” telecasts, it additionally holds rights to Nascar racing and Premiere League soccer, to not point out its multi-billion-dollar dedication to U.S. rights for the Olympics. In current months, NBCU has lined up rights to stream Major League Baseball video games on Peacock on late Sunday mornings. NBCU in 2021 shut down its NBCSN sports-focused cable network, hoping to push audiences to larger properties like USA in a bid to spice up the economics of that general-entertainment cable outlet at a time when new streaming-video hubs are luring larger audiences.

His departure follows that of Linda Yaccarino, the previous NBCU ad-sales chief who left in May to tackle the CEO function at social-media outlet Twitter. Lazarus was additionally named to supervise advert gross sales, with Mark Marshall, an NBCU gross sales veteran, taking oversight of each day actions.

Bevacqua initially joined NBC Sports as president in 2018 —  the primary time the unit had an govt in that function for the reason that unit was reorganized in 2011 within the wake of Comcast taking management of NBCU. The govt had served as CEO of the PGA,which supervises the PGA Championship and the Ryder Cup and serves greater than 29,000 members,, since 2012. Prior to his PGA function, Bevacqua served as the worldwide head of golf at Creative Artists Agency. He was named chairman of NBC Sports in 2020, after increasing NBC’s portfolio of golf rights; charting a transfer extra instantly into sports activities betting; and positioning NBC Sports for a client base more and more centered on streaming video on demand.

NBC Sports is engaged in numerous initiatives. Its rights take care of Nascar is slated to lapse subsequent yr, and there may be doubtless a way that the racing league will search to monetize extra of its occasions in digital vogue. A take care of the WWE that places “Monday Night Raw” on USA additionally expires in 2024. The professional-wrestling firm will quickly be a part of broader, publicly-traded unit managed by Endeavor. NBC Sports can be engaged in launching subsequent yr’s Paris Olympics and a brand new slate of Saturday-night faculty soccer video games from Big Ten.

There may also be the query of Notre Dame rights, which NBCU has had since 1990. Bevacqua might play a giant function in figuring out if the corporate will get to maintain them sooner or later.