Photo Credit: NBC Sports
The Zac Brown Band debuted NBC’s new Sunday Night Baseball opening on Sunday, with the launch of the Atlanta Braves game vs. the Cleveland Guardians. The band’s appearance gives NBC a new weekly baseball identity built around a cover of Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s “Karn Evil 9, 1st Impression Part 2.”
The band joins a short list of artists who have fronted major baseball opens for television, including Carrie Underwood and Lenny Kravitz. Zac Brown said the comparison was meaningful and called the moment humbling for him.
“It’s humbling, honestly, to have our band’s name mentioned in the same breath as theirs in this context means a lot,” Brown said in an email to The Associated Press. “We’ve spent many years just trying to make music that connects with people, and something like this tells you that it’s reaching further than you ever imagined.”
NBC Sports creative director Tripp Dixon said the song choice came down to its organ-driven sound and its opening line, “Welcome back, my friends to the show that never ends.” The open was filmed in Milwaukee last month, and a brief preview has already aired during NBC’s opening night broadcast.
The debut also carries personal weight for Brown, who grew up in Georgia and followed the Braves closely. Brown said it felt like a moment was surreal for him.
“Man, that is not lost on me at all. I’m a Georgia boy through and through, so having this debut on a night when the Braves are playing, that’s the kind of thing you just can’t script,” Brown said. “Our fans know how much Atlanta means to us. To have this moment tied to our team, in our home state, it really does make it feel full circle.”
“It was one of those experiences where you step back and think, how did we get here?,” Brown said. “We put everything we had into the performance and then watching it come together with the visuals, the production, it took on a whole new life. The folks at NBC Sports really understood the energy we were going for. It felt like a genuine collaboration, and when I finally saw the finished product, I was really proud.”
NBC’s new Sunday night package comes from a three-year agreement with Major League Baseball (MLB) that also includes the wild-card round of the post-season. After the first game, NBC will shift the next six weeks to Peacock and NBSSN before returning to NBC’s main network window on May 31.
