On Tuesday, Versant Media Group reported its first earnings as a publicly traded company. The portfolio of networks, which includes CNBC, MS NOW (formerly MSNBC), USA Network, E! and Fandango, was spun off from Comcast in January.
Versant Media reported $6.69 billion in 2025 revenue, representing a 5% year-over-year decline. Advertising revenue in particular was $1.6 billion – a 9% YOY drop.
Comcast created Versant to separate out its declining cable assets from the high-performing digital assets like the Peacock streaming service. But that certainly doesn’t mean Versant is content to leave its cable networks out for dead.
“We’re positioning Versant as a platform for growth and are committed to continue investing in the business,” CEO Mark Lazarus, former NBCUniversal Media Group chairman, told investors during the company’s earnings call on Tuesday.
Versant’s survival depends on its ability to modernize its TV networks. Which means – unsurprisingly – a focus on streaming.
Case in point: During the conference call, Versant confirmed plans to create a subscription service for CNBC tailored to retail investors, including stock recommendations and analytics. The company also shared plans in December to launch standalone streaming platforms later this year for Fandango and MS NOW. These plans include an ad-supported Fandango streaming service, and a subscription service for MS NOW that includes a live video component.
More than just pay TV
As for the company’s cable networks, even as cord-cutting rises and pay TV profitability plummets, the numbers weren’t all doom and gloom.
According to Versant, content within its sports and CNBC programming slates saw particularly promising engagement – and not only because CNBC and USA Network both simulcasted the Winter Olympics last month.
Altogether, Versant’s full footprint reaches roughly 100 million viewers per month. “Approximately 60% of our audience [viewership] comes from news and sports – which is most valued by audiences and advertisers in 2025,” Lazarus said. Packaging together scale and engagement should increase Versant’s odds of “generating robust advertiser demand” throughout the rest of the year, he said.
Versant’s digital subscription services earmarked for CNBC, MS NOW and Fandango are one of the main ways it plans to pave a path to profitability by extending beyond pay TV into digital channels, including streaming. Last year, 19% of Versant’s revenue came from non-pay TV platforms, and “our target is 33% over the next three to five years,” Lazarus said. Over time, he added, the ultimate goal is that at least 50% of Versant’s revenue comes from channels other than pay TV, including streaming.
“Revenue mix is a critical indicator of our strategic transformation,” he said. These new subscription services should “connect us with a younger, highly engaged audience.”
Versant is upgrading its content slate to ensure it can attract that younger audience.
Unsurprisingly, sports is at the top of that programming list. PGA of America extended its media rights agreements with USA Sports through at least 2033, the company announced this week. USA Network also recently signed an airing rights agreement with the WNBA to expand its basketball coverage, which is active through 2036.
The company also nodded to its December acquisition of Indy Cinema Group, a cloud-based operating system for movie theaters, which will now operate as part of Fandango to help it monetize and expand its content slate.
For example, Versant plans to continue expanding its presence in the free ad-supported TV (FAST) space as part of the company’s plans to “extend our footprint beyond traditional pay TV,” Lazarus said. He also mentioned that Versant is actively in talks with programming partners about potentially distributing some of its FAST channels, although he didn’t share details.
For now, Versant is focused on expanding and selling its content slate as it benefits from its two-year agreement with NBCUniversal. NBCU will sell ad inventory for content under the Versant umbrella through at least two upfront cycles.
Over time, Versant expects to become “more involved in programmatic sales,” in large part because it has “a lot of data and information about our customers to target advertising in TV and digital spaces,” Lazarus said.
UPDATE 3/3/26: This article was updated to clarify details about the subscription services Versant Media plans to launch this year.
