NBC Sports are a real life sportscasting group in the United States. They originated the character and concept of Ted Lasso in a short film on their network. A few of the lines in the original film were reused in the first episode of the Apple TV+ series.
Consequently, each episode of the series bears the credit, "Based on pre-existing format / characters from NBC Sports".
The major differences between the original short film and the subsequent series are:
- The NBC Sports version has Ted coaching Tottenham Hotspur, not AFC Richmond
- Ted appears to be displaying a different sort of Southern accent
- Ted gets fired from Tottenham extremely quickly