YouTube TV, others pulling Olympic Channel on Friday

The Olympic Channel will officially disappear from cable, satellite and streaming TV platforms on Friday, according to a notice sent to subscribers of various services this week.

The timing coincides with the planned shutdown of the sports-centric pay television network, which was announced earlier this year by Comcast’s NBC Universal, which operates it.

The Olympic Channel was launched immediately after the 2016 Olympic Games. It is a variant of a pay television network operated by the International Olympic Committee, which distributes localized versions of the channel in other territories.

The domestic channel was programmed and distributed in partnership with Comcast’s NBC Universal, which holds the exclusive rights to broadcast the Olympic Games in the United States through 2032.

In July, Comcast said it would shut down the Olympic Channel as it reorganized its television strategy around streaming. The company closed its flagship sports network NBCSN last year and moved live events previously carried on the channel to other cable networks and its streaming service, Peacock.

On Thursday, Google-owned streaming service YouTube TV told customers it would stop offering the Olympic Channel on September 30. The service said subscribers will also lose access to all programs and events recorded on the Olympic Channel using YouTube TV’s cloud-based DVR on that date as well.

Other streaming services that will also lose the Olympic Channel on Friday include Dish Network’s Sling TV, Hulu with Live TV, Fubo TV and DirecTV Stream.