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Sports

Premier League Promo Goes Viral for NBC Sports

Saturday Night Live veteran Jason Sudeikis' depiction of a fish-out-of-water American football boss tasked with coaching an English football team has kicked up over 2 million views for NBC Sports. The promo spot was unveiled two weeks before the Premier League is slated to debut across NBCUniversal on-air and online properties.

Sudeikis (Saturday Night Live, We're the Millers) plays Coach Lasso, an American coach hired to manage Tottenham Hotspur. The 5-minute spot, which was shot in England at Tottenham's training facility, pokes fun at America's inexperience and unfamiliarity with English football.

NBC Sports, which delivers America's reigning No. 1 primetime show in Sunday Night Football, won the rights to the Barclays Premier League with a three-year, $250 million deal that was struck in the fall.

Following the Premier League’s announcement of the first three months of the 2013-14 schedule on July 11, NBC Sports Group released its television schedule for that time period featuring live coverage of all 130 matches, beginning Saturday, Aug. 17 at 7:00 AM ET on NBC Sports Network with the Liverpool-Stoke matchup.

A total of 69 Premier League matches – at least five games each week in the season’s first three months – will be presented on NBC Sports Network, NBC and CNBC with all games preceded and followed by Premier League Live pre- and post-match shows from the NBC Sports Group International Broadcast Center in Stamford, Conn.

The 61 remaining Premier League matches will be made available on Premier League Extra Time, a bonus television package available to MVPDs at no extra cost for customers who receive NBC Sports Network.

In addition, 27 matches in the season’s first three months will be telecast in Spanish by Telemundo and mun2.

All Premier League games will be streamed on NBC Sports Live Extra, NBC Sports Group’s live streaming product for desktops, mobile devices and tablets. Games airing on NBC Sports Network will be live streamed via "TV Everywhere," the media industry’s effort to make quality content available to MVPD customers both in and out of the home and on multiple platforms.