Last summer, executives at NBC in charge of Comcast SportsNet’s regional sports networks decided it was time to spruce up its flagship highlights show “SportsNet Central.” “We had felt for a while that our look didn’t match our content,” says Tom Stathakes, SVP of production and programming for NBC Sports Regional Networks. NBC Sports partnered with entertainment marketing agency Troika and collectively set their sights on a rebrand by Major League Baseball Opening Day 2014.

Eleven months may seem like plenty of time to rebrand a sports highlight show, but the NBC Sports stable, composed of regional networks in nearly a dozen major markets, created some unique challenges.

“That’s always a tough dance,” says Stathakes on creating a unified look across all markets with local flavor for each. “At times it’s like herding cats…getting everyone to agree on what it should look like can be very difficult.”

“The first challenge is, ‘how do we unify everybody’s point of view but celebrate the individual cities?’” says Troika Creative Director Gil Haslam. The Troika team began by visiting Comcast SportsNet Bay Area, talking with everyone from promo and graphics editors to show producers and even the station’s GM.

“I had worked with [Troika] at Golf,” says Stathakes, a former senior VP at Golf Channel. “We met with them first for three hours. They’re really good at setting a narrative of what we were trying to put forth. They asked questions for hours.”

Troika developed a new “SportsNet” logo, show open, packaging elements and a catchy look for promos. In addition to those universal elements, the group created team-specific elements, incorporating a team’s colors into the graphic package for certain highlights. A group of about 25 people from the core team to writers, strategy and development personnel worked on the project for Troika.

NBC executives were insistent that the rebrand be done in time for Opening Day, a huge driver of eyeballs for the RSNs. The rollout began with the Bay Area, followed closely by the rest of the markets. While Stathakes says judging the success of a rebrand is never an exact science (“it’s not like a movie opening,” he jokes), feedback from the RSNs left NBC confident it was a positive move.

Still, the process of revamping “SportsNet Central” is far from over. Next up, Stathakes and NBC Sports executives are overhauling the show’s sets, starting with Boston’s Comcast SportsNet New England.

“We felt like it was time to up our games,” Stathakes says. “Really have the look match what we deliver in content every day in the local markets.”

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