Toyota returns as the presenting sponsor of the 2024 Paris Summer Paralympics, NBCUniversal said.

Following record-breaking ad sales for the Paris Olympics, NBCU said, ad sales for the Paralympic Games were up 60% from Tokyo, with a record number of advertisers participating.

“Coming off of our highly successful Paris Olympic Games, we are thrilled to continue bringing world-class athletic competition to audiences across the country with the 2024 Paralympic Games,” said Dan Lovinger, President, Olympic & Paralympic Partnerships, NBCUniversal.

“With the lights of Paris shining the biggest spotlight on Paralympic athletes, we are partnering with brands like Toyota, whose passion for innovation and commitment to empowering all people truly embodies the Paralympic spirit,“ Lovinger said. “Toyota's dedication to supporting these incredible moments both enhances the viewer experience and strengthens the bond between our audience and these inspiring athletes,” Lovinger said. “Our unprecedented roster of advertisers for Paris 2024 is further validation of the growth and overall health of the Paralympic movement.”  

NBCUniversal is giving more advertisers access to Paralympic games by offering inventory programmatically.

“Toyota is proud to return as the presenting sponsor of NBCUniversal’s coverage of the Paralympic Games Paris 2024,” said Mike Tripp, group VP of Toyota Marketing.  “We are excited to watch our Team Toyota athletes, and this incredible gathering of elite competitors come together in Paris to strive for gold.” 

NBCUniversal plans to present more than 140 hours of television coverage across NBC, USA Network and CNBC starting August 28. 

This year’s Paralympic Games will include a breathtaking Opening Ceremony set to take place on the Champs-Élysées at the Place de la Concorde.

Coverage will also include the most streaming hours ever for a Paralympic event, with about 1,500 hours of coverage across all 22 Paralympic sports set to be streamed on Peacock throughout the duration of the 12-day event.

NBCUniversal will be bringing back Gold Zone and Multiview — two of the most popular features of Peacock’s coverage of the Paris Olympics — for the Paralympic Games.

This weekend’s list of live TV sports events starts on the baseball field with ABC's Saturday coverage of the Little League World Series semifinals between Ohio and South Dakota and Michigan and Hawaii. ESPN on Sunday will air the World Series Championship as well as the third place game.

ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball telecast will feature the New York Yankees against the Oakland A's.

In other sports, NBC and NBCSN will offer weekend coverage of the Paralympics events from Tokyo. NBC will also team with Golf Channel to offer weekend coverage of the PGA BMW Championship golf event. 

The 2021 college football season kicks off with several contests on Saturday, highlighted by the Nebraska-Illinois afternoon game on Fox. ESPN will televise the Hawaii-UCLA game while CBSSN offers coverage of the UConn-Fresno State contest.

NBC on Saturday will televise the NASCAR Cup Coke Zero Sugar 400 auto race, while ESPN on Sunday will televise the Formula One Belgian Grand Prix event. 

On the soccer field NBC and CNBC will offer live Saturday Premier League soccer game telecasts, while NBCSN will feature Saturday and Sunday morning league games. Fox will lead the weekend's MLS coverage with the LA Galaxy-LAFC contest, with FS1 and ESPN offering Sunday morning league coverage.

The NFL pre-season ends this weekend with several Sunday national broadcast TV airings including CBS' Miami-Cincinnati game and NBC's Cleveland-Atlanta contest.

Showtime on Sunday will distribute a pay-per-view boxing match between YouTube sensation Jake Paul and former mixed martial arts world champion Tyron Woodley. On Saturday, ESPN will televise a live UFC Fight Night card featuring the Edson Barboza-Giga Chikadze featherweight main event fight. 

The PyeongChang Paralympics are a great example of how Comcast NBCUniversal unites content, distribution and technology to bring a truly unique experience to millions of people across the country, including viewers with disabilities.

From March 9 through March 18, NBC Olympics will cover all six Paralympic winter sports – alpine skiing, snowboarding, sled hockey, wheelchair curling, cross-country skiing, and biathlon – as part of its more than 250 hours of 2018 Winter Games coverage across NBC, NBCSN, Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA, NBCSports.com, and the NBC Sports app. 

For the first time ever, Paralympic broadcasts on NBC and NBCSN include video description. And on Xfinity X1, voice control, voice guidance and closed captioning are helping viewers access the planned 94 hours of Paralympics television coverage. It's the most ever for a Winter Games, nearly doubling that of Sochi 2014 (50 hours).

Based on recent research, we know these assistive technologies are helpful but they also suffer from low levels of awareness. To make accessibility options easier to enable on X1, we created a few shortcuts for customers; for example, saying “accessibility” into the X1 Voice Remote or tapping the “B” key to get to a menu with all of X1’s accessibility options. X1 users can also quickly jump into specific features by saying “captions,” description,” “SAP,” “voice guidance” or, to find any programs that are described, “shows with description.”

We also have made some improvements to our most popular accessible features. We were the first in our industry to launch voice guidance, a talking TV guide that reads aloud program titles, network names, and DVR and On Demand menus for people with visual disabilities. Now users can control the rate of speech by choosing “regular,” “fast” or “fastest” to navigate their X1 experience.

Tom Wlodkowski, who is blind himself, is Comcast's vice president of accessibility. He's pictured above demonstrating the MSO's new X1 voice remote features. Click here to watch a video about him and his work.