On July 1, 2022, NBCUniversal announced that Olympic Channel would be shut down on September 30, 2022, with plans to move its programming to other outlets to be determined.

In its early years, it carried sports coverage from USA in the HD format, including its rights to the Masters Tournament, tennis's US Open, and the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

[3] The network's original purpose came amid bandwidth constraints that existed at the time, which limited the number of HD channels that television providers could offer to their subscribers.

[6] It also, as part of a consortium of other NBC Universal networks and Sundance Channel, broadcast the entirety of the 2007 Live Earth concerts in high definition.

The joint venture was folded in April 2010, with the planned acquisition of NBC (who ran its own Olympic sport-focused channel with InterMedia Partners, Universal Sports) having been cited as a potential distraction from the proposed channel (which was originally intended to launch following the 2010 Winter Olympics).

Besides Xfinity, providers who carried the channel at launch included Altice, AT&T U-verse, DirecTV, Dish Network, Spectrum, and Verizon Fios, along with Hulu's live TV service; NBC stated that it would be available in 35 million households when the rebranding occurs.

The closing comes as NBCUniversal prioritizes its streaming service Peacock, along with the earlier shutdown of NBCSN at the end of 2021 and move of its cable sports properties to USA and CNBC.