Fox Sports and BE reach 2 year agreement on corp sponsorship

[dmac80]

Fox Sports Will Sell for Big East
(Sports Business Journal, November 11, 2013) Fox Sports has recently inked a two-year deal with the Big East conference to sell and market all corporate sponsorship throughout the Big East. This deal was made only days before the Big East kicked off the beginning of a 12-year, $600 million deal with Fox Sports as their primary televising network. The Big East now joins the ranks of the SEC and very few other conferences to make such a lucrative deal. The Big East executives believe they are paving the way for the other conferences to make integrated deals with television networks by granting them rights for televising and sponsorship sales.

Fox Sports has hit the ground running with a hardy advertising scheme that has led to regular season tickets being mostly sold out, and an astounding 70% of tickets to the Big East tournament, which is in March, have been sold already. A substantial reason that this deal was able to happen was because Val Ackerman was named the commissioner of the Big East just four months ago. She has been vital in negotiating this deal; she stated, “This is not just a basketball deal. They share our determination to promote and maximize the commercial opportunities with all of our sports.” Soon after she landed the job as commissioner, she was contacted by many agencies attempting to gain rights to sponsorship. Ackerman turned them all down though because she saw the upside in integrating sponsorship and televising all under one roof.

This deal is believed by both sides to be a ground-breaking deal that most if not all conferences willestablish in the very near future. It gives the Big East a leg up on the competition, and if all goes well, this deal will put Fox Sports in the driver’s seat to make deals with other conferences. Fox Sports has taken a big step forward in becoming one of the premier college sports networks and will already have experience when the next conference comes calling.

http://www.entertainmentmanagementonlin ... -big-east/

From Fox:


Fox Sports Teams With Big East to Sell Conference’s Sponsorships
By Curtis Eichelberger - Nov 11, 2013 11:00 AM ET



Fox Sports and the Big East Conference became partners to sell the college sports league’s sponsorships and broadcast advertising.

Under the two-year agreement, Fox and the Big East will sell the presenting-sponsorship rights to all conference championships, plus a range of television and non-television inventory, Fox said in a press release.

“We have already had many inquiries from advertisers looking to associate with Big East properties, and this unique arrangement will allow us to package and deliver the assets a client values throughout all sports seasons and conference championships,” said Larry Jones, executive vice president of Fox Sports, a unit of News Corp.

The conference’s biggest properties include the Big East men’s basketball tournament at Madison Square Garden in New York City, the Big East women’s basketball tournament in Chicago and other conference championships including soccer, lacrosse and track and field.

Fox is the main broadcast rightsholder of the Big East, which is made up of 10 schools where the main sport primarily is basketball. Football schools who were Big East members have formed the American Athletic Conference.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-1 ... ships.html

[whiteandblue77]

Totally Friggin' Awesome

[stever20]

I think it's a great thing- but I think there is a problem with the last line where it says that Fox Sports will have experience when the next conference comes calling. The problem with that is that outside of the Big Ten(which I have a feeling already has the advertising lined up)- no other conference is out there available for a very long time. I mean the next one at all available would be CUSA/MWC in 2015-16, then AAC in 2020, and then the Big 12 like 10 years from now!

Kind of strange that it's only a 2 year deal.

[Bill Marsh]

An interesting detail in this article is that the Big East is getting $600 million for 12 years, or an average of $50 annually and $5 million per school for the life of the contract. I assume that at this point they have the actual numbers. This is at the sigh end of the various estimates that were reported last season. Certainly good news to hear that the optimistic estimates were the correct ones.

[Xudash]

This is great news.

I don't know how many fellow BE members have their sports marketing assets/rights under management with a professional firm, but Xavier enjoys such a relationship with Learfield Sports (http://learfieldsports.com/university-partners/xavier-sports-properties/). It will be interesting to see how all this is tied in together.

[TheHall]

This is great news. I do believe though if it wasn't clear who has been & will be calling the shots like on expansion for example, it should be now and it's not the presidents.

[dmac80]

I posted the article and I think I get what it's saying, but can someone familiar with sports marketing and all this stuff sum up what this means for the league and the member schools?

[Jet915]

I posted the article and I think I get what it's saying, but can someone familiar with sports marketing and all this stuff sum up what this means for the league and the member schools?

More money hopefully!

[bman95]

This is good for both the BE and Fox (especially if we perform well). Aside from the money we get from the network, teams get money from the OOC tournaments/challenges. Duke/Kansas/KU/and the other team? each got over 2 million to play that 1 game. All the schools get some extra money for these special 1-2 game tournaments. With this contract Fox can better market the BE and presumably both parties will benefit financially. A Pac 12/BE challenge, higher profile games between other conf teams that may happen. Fox benefits by getting outside sponsorships for the games or events and by drawing better games for their networks.

[dmac80]

Thanks that's what I was thinking re money, but I didn't realize it was also related to the "challenge tournaments" etc.