*breaking* new TV Deal

[GoldenWarrior11]

Random ECU fan here. I just wanted to congratulate you all on this TV deal. The move to break away and do your own thing (esp UConn) keeps proving to be the right move. Maybe one of these days ECU will have a respectable basketball program. I live near Davidson and go to their games occasionally so my dream for them is the Big East, though I doubt it ever happens. Anyway, congrats!

Thank you sir!

Thanks x2. Good luck to ECU Football, as that continues to be the key for upward advancement. One of the most underrated and supportive fan bases in college football.

[Xudash]

Ourand confirming that the average annual value for the league is $80 million.

It may not be $10mm, but it beats the hell out of $5mm and change per school. Hope they officially post the news soon.

[Omaha1]

Ourand confirming that the average annual value for the league is $80 million.

So $80M/11 schools = 7.27M per school each year?

[Django]

Why don’t they announce the amount?!

[FenwayFriar]

If you don't wanna have to get around the paywall, here you go...

https://puck.news/how-nbc-wbd-fox-negotiated-to-land-big-east-basketball/

Big East of Eden

The inside story of how NBC and WBD negotiated with Fox to land Big East basketball. In the modern sports media business, one company’s “nice-to-have” content is another’s “need to have” package.

JOHN OURAND June 27, 2024

When NBC Sports president Rick Cordella became interested in picking up broadcast rights to the Big East conference, he didn’t actually ring up the conference. Instead, his first calls went to Fox Sports executives Mark Silverman and Jordan Bazant, who were running the process. WBD Sports’ Luis Silberwasser was right behind him on the phone log.

Yes, this all seems very unorthodox: Why would a broadcast network negotiate a rights deal with competitors? After all, Fox Sports didn’t actually control these rights; the conference did, of course. And this wasn’t even some sort of sublicensing agreement, like ESPN’s recent decision to sell College Football Playoff games to WBD. (Fox Sports also recently sold some UEFA Euro 2024 matches to Fubo.)

And yet, rival executives weren’t all that surprised to learn that Silverman and Bazant were the ones running these discussions for the Big East. A mere two years ago, Silverman and Larry Jones (a Fox Sports E.V.P. at the time) ran the Big Ten rights negotiations and cut deals with CBS and NBC. Fox had a say in those rights because it was a majority owner of the Big Ten Network. Silverman and Jones were designated representatives of the BTN, which created a bizarre and fascinating dynamic in which sports media executives were forced to make a pitch to a rival.

The Big East deal is slightly different. In its previous Big East deal, Fox bought the conference’s rights and brought CBS on as a partner. Before the rights hit the open market this year, Fox told the conference that it wanted the same type of deal, but might consider moving away from CBS. The Big East was amenable. Negotiations started around six months ago, and the six-year deals were announced today, with Fox keeping the main package, and NBC and WBD divvying up the rest. All told, starting with the 2025-26 season, the Big East will see its rights revenue double to an average of around $80 million per year, from the $41 million the conference receives now.

Big East or Famine

As TV networks have become more judicious about spending and cash flow, the Big East appeared to be the type of conference that was destined to be left behind. It doesn’t have football, the main driver of these college deals. Plus, the conference faced persistent rumors that its top school, UConn, could bolt.

But each of the networks had a different reason for cutting a deal. Fox, of course, liked the control that it had during the negotiations and has a history with the conference. Fox started carrying Big East games in 2013 as the company launched its FS1 pay TV channel, and the games dominated FS1’s schedule in those early years. More recently, Fox has diversified through deals with the Big Ten and Big 12, but Big East teams have still won five national championships since its carriage deal began. Also, even despite defections, it remains the conference in the Acela corridor media markets of New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.

NBC was aggressive from the start of the negotiations. The network wants to put more games on Peacock, which will carry 25 regular-season men’s basketball games next season, a year before the deal officially starts, and five early-round and quarterfinal conference tournament games. The following year, NBC and Peacock have committed to carrying 60 men’s and women’s regular-season games, plus some tourney games.

Then there’s Warner Bros. Discovery, which has been amassing sports rights as its prospects for renewing the NBA look dim. In recent months, WBD has picked up rights to the French Open, some College Football Playoff games, and NASCAR races as David Zaslav looks for maneuvers to preserve the value of his cable assets. WBD executives say these deals are part of its strategy to expand its sports offerings, but it’s hard not to see the move as a hedge against losing the NBA. If WBD can’t sign an NBA deal, it will need to show distributors that it still has the high-value content to keep them paying top dollar for TNT and TBS.

CBS negotiated to keep its piece, and at one point was viewed as the frontrunner, but bowed out as the conference’s rights fee escalated. For CBS and its cable sports channel, the Big East was nice-to-have but not need-to-have programming. CBS will add more Big Ten and Big 12 basketball games next year. ESPN, which has a ton of college sports programming, didn’t take part in the negotiations. Neither did Amazon or any of the streamers. They have their eyes on bigger fish than Syracuse-St. John’s games…

[Xudash]

Thanks, Fenway.

What a read.

[kayako]

Unless anything related to expansion gets mentioned in the next couple of days, this puts to bed those pesky Gonzaga or Dayton ideas. So tired of seeing useless attendance figures thrown around here. More schools mean lower overhead costs (maybe not even the case with Gonzaga), so Val probably isnt completely against expanding, but it looks like Fox, NBC, and TNT don't want to pay for them.

If 7.27M is true, it's a good number for most of us. High performers will probably earn closer to 10M if it's uneven distribution again.

[Xudash]

Unless anything related to expansion gets mentioned in the next couple of days, this puts to bed those pesky Gonzaga or Dayton ideas. So tired of seeing useless attendance figures thrown around here. More schools mean lower overhead costs (maybe not even the case with Gonzaga), so Val probably isnt completely against expanding, but it looks like Fox, NBC, and TNT don't want to pay for them.

If 7.27M is true, it's a good number for most of us. High performers will probably earn closer to 10M if it's uneven distribution again.

Yep. $7.27mm, if that is the AAV, is too high a bar for any mid-major to clear. Maybe Gonzaga’s Spokane address is simply too much for it to make sense to the conference. Otherwise, I think the media split is done on an even basis. Conference members end up with different revenue levels based upon NCAAT performance and how those monies are distributed.

North of $7mm does feel good. The point about our deal being similar in basketball valuation to those of the ACC and Big 12 and the fact that we received an approximate 95% bump takes away any sting of hearing that the number could have been $10+mm or more.

Expansion would have been announced along with the media deal. Crickets on that front.

[DeltaV]

They have their eyes on bigger fish than Syracuse-St. John’s games…

Does anyone want to tell them?

Or, do they know something that we don't?

[FenwayFriar]

They have their eyes on bigger fish than Syracuse-St. John’s games…

Does anyone want to tell them?

Or, do they know something that we don't?

Not sure what was more confusing when reading the last sentence of the article, the fact it mentioned a team that hasn't been in the conference in 11 years or the fact it ended with an ellipsis. Either way, pretty strange.