Brian Roberts Breaks Up Comcast, Spinning Off NBCUniversal and Sky

Brian Roberts spent his 67th birthday finalizing the most consequential decision of his career: splitting Comcast in two. The cable giant announced a plan to spin off NBCUniversal and Sky into a standalone pure-play media company, unwinding a convergence bet Roberts made 15 years ago when Comcast bought a 51% stake in NBCUniversal in 2011 for what eventually became a full acquisition. The Roberts family will retain a one-third voting stake in both companies, and Brian says he plans to stay involved in each.

The breakup reflects the brutal economics that have squeezed both halves of the business simultaneously. Comcast has lost domestic broadband subscribers for 12 consecutive quarters, battered by cellphone carriers offering wireless home internet and Elon Musk's Starlink. Meanwhile, Peacock — launched into an already crowded streaming market in 2020 — has struggled with profitability and trails rivals in subscriber count. Comcast shares fell roughly 30% in the year before the split was announced, leaving Roberts with few palatable options. Earlier this year the company had already spun off cable networks including MSNBC, CNBC, USA, and Syfy into a separate entity called Versant.

Roberts built toward this moment through a series of aggressive but ultimately insufficient moves. He explored a joint streaming venture with Paramount, and personally inserted himself into a $2.5 billion, 11-year NBA rights deal meant to give Peacock scale and relevance. He was also blindsided when Disney and Warner launched their joint sports streaming venture Venu without including NBCUniversal — a slight that deepened his conviction that the media unit needed to operate independently. The Venu venture ultimately collapsed, but the episode crystallized the strategic constraints of being tethered to a broadband utility.

Cable legend John Malone, a friend and shareholder, said his one-word reaction to the news was "finally," and acknowledged he had long ribbed Roberts about missed opportunities — including being too slow on streaming, which Malone says should have been a cable industry business before Netflix dominated it. Roberts, known as measured and relationship-driven, presented SNL creator Lorne Michaels with a custom antique watch at the show's 50th anniversary, and counts Amazon CEO Andy Jassy among his industry confidants. The Roberts family saga comes full circle: Brian's text from one of his children the day he finalized the split invoked patriarch Ralph Roberts, Comcast's co-founder, as someone who would have embraced the move.