History of the Big East Conference and TV Rights Contracts
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History of the Big East Conference and TV Rights Contracts
by Fieldhouse Flyer » Tue Aug 24, 2021 7:03 am
Post #1
History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts
Post #1: History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: May 31, 1979 - December 10, 2012
Post #2: History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: December 11, 2012 – September 4, 2021
Post #3: Present and Future TV Rights Contracts
Post #4: Information about the Big East Universities and Most Likely Expansion Candidates
Post #5: Rankings for Men’s Basketball Expenses
Post #6: Why Xavier, Butler, and Creighton were chosen over Dayton, Saint Louis, and VCU
Post #7: Fieldhouse Flyer’s "You heard it here first" post - September 7, 2021
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Big East Conference Commissioners
May 31, 1979 - June 30, 1990 • Dave Gavitt
July 1, 1990 - June 30, 2009 • Mike Tranghese
July 1, 2009 - May 7, 2012 • John Marinatto
August 14, 2012 - June 30, 2013 • Mike Aresco
July 1, 2013 - present • Val Ackerman
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The Present Fox Sports TV Rights Contract
The Fox Sports TV Rights Contract
Fox TV Contract Year. Basketball Season
1. 2013-14 . . . . . 7. 2019-20
2. 2014-15 . . . . . 8. 2020-21 (11-member conference)
3. 2015-16 . . . . . 9. 2021-22 (11-member conference)
4. 2016-17 . . . . 10. 2022-23
5. 2017-18 . . . . 11. 2023-24
6. 2018-19 . . . . 12. 2024-25
Contract Law and Specific Performance - Page 32 of the Conference Realignment thread:
History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: May 31, 1979 - December 10, 2012
1977 • The College Football Association (CFA) was formed by many of the American colleges with top-level college football programs in order to negotiate contracts with TV networks to televise football games. It was formed by 63 schools from most of the major college football conferences and selected schools whose football programs were independent of any conference. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) had controlled all college football TV rights since the early 1950s. It limited the number of games shown on TV because of a concern that televising more games would hurt attendance. The schools that formed the CFA banded together because of what they viewed as obstructionism of the NCAA by smaller schools. "People were just fed up with the NCAA's parochialism, power grab, etc., but also they wanted more money, they wanted to maximize and they wanted their fans to be able to see them on TV," said James Ponsoldt, a law professor at the University of Georgia. One by one, the major conferences (and Notre Dame, the most prominent independent program) would eventually negotiate their own separate TV deals, reducing the importance of the CFA. The CFA shut down in 1997.
May 31, 1979 • The Big East is established as the country’s first big-time basketball-centric conference.
May 31, 1979 • Dave Gavitt is named first Commissioner of the Big East Conference
June 27, 1984 • The Supreme Court of the United States adjudicated in NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma that the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) television plan violated the Sherman and Clayton Antitrust Acts, which were designed to prohibit group actions that restrained open competition and trade. The case dealt with television rights to college football games, which were controlled by the NCAA and limited the appearance of university teams in each season. The NCAA believed that their control of television rights protected live attendance, which was disputed by a number of colleges. These larger colleges formed the College Football Association to negotiate television contracts, until the NCAA advised the colleges that they would be banned from all NCAA competitions, not just in football. The Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma and the University of Georgia Athletic Association sued to force the NCAA to stop the practice. The Supreme Court held that the NCAA's actions were a restraint of trade and ruled for the universities.
June 21, 1990 • Mike Tranghese is named as second Big East Commissioner. Tranghese, who was Dave Gavitt's right-hand man, was the unanimous choice of the league's athletic directors.
July 2, 1990 • Conference Realignment Could Reshape College Athletics - Mark Maske, The Washington Post - [This epic tome of an article was written more than 31 years ago, but it reads and feels like it could have been written yesterday, and is well worth a look.]
Also see: History of Conference Realignments 1955-1991 – HLOH thread - August 10, 2021
1991 • The first season that the Big East sponsors college football. The Big East becomes the sixth ‘Power 6’ football conference.
February 16, 1994 • CBS: Big East Pact More Than Move To Fill Space - Steve Nidetz, The Chicago Tribune
February 16, 1994 • Big East Kicks Off TV Deal - Jack Bogaczyk, The Roanoke Times
August 12, 1994 • Fox Sports is launched.
March 22, 2000 • ABC, ESPN Ink Big East Deal – CBS News
August 29, 2006 • Big East, ESPN agree to six-year deal - ESPN
August 30, 2006 • Big East, ESPN Reach New Six-Year Agreements - Villanova.com
June 30, 2009 • Michael Tranghese, the Commissioner of The BIG EAST Conference since 1990 and league’s first full time employee in 1979 retires. Shortly after being named Commissioner, Tranghese directed and oversaw the creation of Big East football, which began competition in 1991.
June 30, 2009 • Mike Tranghese steps down after 19 years as Big East commissioner.
July 1, 2009 • John Marinatto became the third commissioner of the conference. Marinatto will inherit a conference that is stable with membership and television contracts, thanks to the hard work of Tranghese during his tenure.
April, 2012 • At the Big East's spring meetings in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, NBC Sports/Comcast and Fox provided in-depth "pitches" to the league's athletic directors. Sources said the league's AD's were most impressed by the presentations from NBC Sports.
May 26, 2011 • Big East Turns Down ESPN Proposal That Would Have Paid Schools $11M Per Year - Sports Business Journal.
May 26, 2011 • Commissioner John Marinatto turns down 9-year deal with ESPN which would have paid its basketball schools $2.5 million per year.
May 26, 2011 • For Big East, where is all this leading? - Mark Blaudschun, The Boston Globe
September 17, 2011 • Dave Gavitt, Founding Force of the Big East Conference, Dies at 73 - Richard Goldstein, The New York Times
May 7, 2012 • John Marinatto, the third commissioner of the conference, resigns from his position.
2012 • Grumblings about the football schools by the Big East’s Catholic schools become more frequent in local and national news reports.
May 26-28, 2012 • Memorial Day weekend.
June 4, 2012 • On Monday morning, an executive at Fox Sports (who I’ll call ‘George Smiley’) sat in his office reading the latest article about the mistrust and dissension within the Big East. He knew that Fox Sports was searching for new opportunities in live sports programming, and he wondered out loud: ”What if we paid the Big East’s seven basketball schools to leave the Big East and start a new basketball-centric conference?”. The idea intrigued him, and it was not as mad as it might initially seem, because George aware that:
• The Big East was established as a basketball-centric athletic conference in 1979, and did not sponsor football until 1991.
• As of December 17, 2012, the Big East Conference did not have a television contract beyond the 2013-14 season.
• Under the Big East’s current TV Rights contract, each basketball received $1,500,000 per team per year.
• In April 2011, the 16 Big East schools turned down a deal with ESPN which would have paid its basketball-only schools $2,500,000 per year.
George Smiley thought that Fox Sports should test the waters of live college basketball broadcasts, because he believed that there was a possibility of exploiting the dissatisfaction that the Catholic schools were having with the Big East’s football schools. Three big questions loomed:
(1) “Could the seven Catholic schools be persuaded to split off from the football schools?”
(2) “If so, would they leave for $3,000,000 per school per year?” (double their present payout)
(3) “Could the seven Catholic schools keep the Big East brand name?” (very important for instant credibility, continuity, marketing, etc., etc.)
This marks the beginning of the ‘Conceptual Phase’ of the Big East project.
June 4, 2012 to June 22, 2012 • George Smiley works long hours on his proposal, calling in assistance from colleagues in Fox Sports’ Marketing, Legal, and Finance Departments.
June 11, 2012 • George arranges a meeting with the CEO of Fox Sports on Friday, June 22, 2012 to present his proposals. George is aware that the Second Quarter of 2012 ends on June 30th, and there is quarterly meeting of the Fox Sports; Board of Directors scheduled for early July. George wants to give the CEO the opportunity to consult the Board of Directors before committing big money to George’s proposals, which are still a work-in-progress at this point.
Friday, June 22, 2012 • George’s meeting with the CEO goes well, and he gets the go-ahead, as the CEO decided to have more detail in hand before raising the proposal with the Board. George gets a two-month deadline (to August 24th), and a budget of $200,000 to spend on the initial phases of market research, Due Diligence, and the preparation of Draft #1 of the proposed TV Rights Contract.
The first thing George would have done is to liaise with Fox Sports’ HR manager to quickly assemble an ad hoc staff of internal contract lawyers and experienced specialists in marketing, finance, and IT. The next thing was to place an order with the Nielsen Corporation for college basketball viewership ratings for the Top 75 DMAs for the last five years in the form of a Microsoft Access database. The Nielsen Corporation will sell you any data they have for the right price, and Fox Sports was a regular blue-chip customer.
► Nielsen Designated Market Area (DMA) Rankings for the 210 Largest Markets for 2020 and 2021 – Last updated in March, 2021
► Interactive US Map of Nielsen Media Markets – Last updated in March, 2021
George then turns his attention to the tricky question of: ”How much to offer each school?” to leave the Big East Conference. Fox Sports know they have to offer the Catholic 7 a sufficient financial inducement for them to pull the trigger and sign on the dotted line. It is known that under the 2006 TV Rights contract with ESPN, each Catholic Big East school receives $1,500,000 for basketball. An offer too low would be perceived as an insult, and get things off to a bad start. At the same time, Fox Sports wants to minimize their financial risk on the Big East project – and you minimize risk by extending the lowest possible offer. The bigger the offer to the Catholic 7, the bigger the financial risk to Fox Sports. So essentially, Fox Sports needed to find their optimal position on the risk–return spectrum.
As would be standard practice at Fox Sports, George Smiley and his staff would employ the Monte Carlo method for determining Fox Sports’ ideal bid - and its sensitivity to risk. Eight Monte Carlo models would be constructed – one national market model, and seven regional models (one for each of the DMAs hosting a Big East school). Each Monte Carlo model would have 10 to 20 variables, sorted into categories of college basketball viewership, ad revenue ($ price per minute for TV ads – 60 second slots and 30-second slots) and market penetration. Then the IT staff would convert raw data available into probability density curves (a.k.a., ‘Normal Distribution curves’, and more informally, ‘bell curves’) as the weighting factors for each chosen variable. For those of you who are not familiar with this process, I’ll provide an over-simplified example.
Many of you would be familiar with the formula: (WF1)*(Var1) + (WF2)*(Var2) + (WF3)*(Var3) + (WF4)*(Var4) + (WF5)*(Var5) + . . .
… where WF1 is Weighting Factor No. 1 (usually between 0.1 and 0.9) and Var1 is the name of Variable No. 1
… and (WF1 + WF2 + WF3 + WF4 + WF5 + . . . ) = 1.00
Now, if we replace each decimalized Weighting Factor WF with (WF)*(probability density curve), we get the basis of a Monte Carlo simulation. It is generally accepted that 10,000 iterations of a Monte Carlo simulation will produce reliable results if the input is correct (which can be tricky in most instances).
The results (or outputs) from a number of different bespoke Monte Carlo simulation models would enable George to make the necessary 10-year annual projections of total viewership of Catholic 7 college basketball teqms + 3 more ‘statistically average’ unknown expansion teams (broken down for each of the Top 75 DMAs), projected annual revenue from selling advertising for those games (broken down for each of the Top 75 DMAs), and Annual Operating Costs (both fixed and variable), broken down into each of the 120 months of the Monte Carlo projections. Then, a global Monte Carlo simulation model would be created, using components which had previously been created for each of the bespoke Monte Carlo models – giving George all of the answers he needed. It should be noted that Monte Carlo simulation models are only as good as the assumptions on which they are based, the IT expertise in creating the simulation models, and the care in which raw data is converted into probability density curves. Wrong assumptions, or a poor model, or errors in preparing the probability density curves are certain to lead to significant errors in the ‘numbers’ and recommendations contained in the report that George will personally hand to the Fox Sports CEO on Friday, August 24th. With so much riding on the accuracy of his analyses and projections, George will ensure that everything is checked and double-checked by experienced people with the appropriate expertise. Fox Sports would have a lot of them in-house.
George Smiley prudently assumed that an offer of less than $3,000,000 per school per year would not be well-received by the Catholic 7. But it wasn’t that simple, as more detail was required for the Monte Carlo model. Given that the Catholic 7 were presently getting $1.5 M/school/year, and had turned down ESPN’s reported offer of $2.5 M/school/year, George had to subjectively assign a probability of the Catholic 7 accepting the offer, for offer amounts ranging from $3.00 M/school/year to $4.50 M/school/year (in 15 increments of $100,000) based on the assumption that if the Catholic 7 were offered 3 times as much as they are presently getting, there was a 100% chance of the Catholic 7 accepting an offer of $4.50 M/school/year.
After a very considerable amount of work by George and his staff on the Monte Carlo simulations and sensitivity studies for each variable utilized, he determines that the ‘optimal’ offer is $3,400,000 per school per year, and that the ‘ceiling offer’ is $3,800,000 per school per year. An offer in excess of that amount is deemed to be too risky to offer, thus the term ‘ceiling offer’.
August 14, 2012 • Big East Officially Names Mike Aresco as Commissioner
August 14, 2012 • Big East gets serious about TV efforts – ESPN, feature article by Kristi Dosh, Attorney & Sports Business Analyst
Friday, August 24, 2012 • George Smiley submits his completed proposal to the CEO. The CEO is impressed with it and is pleased with the numbers George has put together. The CEO schedules a meeting with the Fox Sports Board of Directors in early September to get their approval for the Big East project, and to get budget approval for its implementation.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012 • The CEO makes his presentation to the Fox Sports Board of Directors.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012 • The Board of Directors notify the CEO of their approval of George Smiley’s proposals, and approval of a provisional budget of $3 million for the ‘Development Phase’ of the Big East project, subject to the following caveats: (1) Noting that ”As of December 17, 2012, the Big East Conference did not have a television contract beyond the 2013-14 season”, the Board set a December 15, 2012 deadline for the completion of the TV Rights Contract negotiations with the seven presidents of the Big East’s Catholic schools, and the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding to that effect. (2) Prior to an official announcement of the anticipated deal in mid-December 2012, absolute secrecy must be maintained. If the media, or the Big East officials, or any of the football schools hear of the secret negotiations taking place before the deal is agreed, the project may be aborted on very short notice. (3) Noting the extensive volume of legal work that must be executed after the deal is agreed (by both internal council and external council) which is expected to take three months, the Board set a March 15, 2013 deadline for the signing of the completed (and legally scrubbed) TV Rights Contract by the CEO of Fox Sports and the seven presidents of the Big East’s Catholic schools. (4) The Catholic 7 should be ‘strongly encouraged’ to obtain the Big East brand name.
Thursday, September 20, 2012 • George Smiley is given a substantial budget increase, and a lot more ad hoc staff members.
Friday October 26, 2012 • Big East shopping for new TV deal - Brett McMurphy, ESPN
Tuesday October 30, 2012 • The CEO of Fox Sports sends seven invitations by courier to presidents of the Big East’s seven Catholic schools, requesting their presence, or the presence of their appointed representative, at a meeting in New York on Tuesday, November 13th to hear a proposal concerning Fox Sports’ sincere interest in offering a TV Rights contract exclusively to the seven universities that are not participating in Big East sponsored football. A reply to this invitation is requested no later than Tuesday, November 6th. The invitations spark a conference call between the seven university presidents, who are quite interested to hear Fox Sports’ proposal, and collectively decide to send their Heads of Legal (usually called the universities’ Vice Presidents for Legal Affairs) from each of the seven universities. They also decide to immediately engage external counsel, and have one of that legal firm’s specialists in TV Rights Contracts attend the meeting, for a total of eight attendees.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012 • The seven Big East presidents send their reply to the Fox Sports CEO. Their reply was exactly what Fox Sports had expected.
Wednesday, November 7, 2012 • Fox Sports’ CEO replies to the seven presidents, thanking them for their positive response, and proving more particulars about the meeting. It was then agreed that external counsel for both sides would attend the meeting as observers, meaning that they would not ask questions, they would not answer questions, nor would they provide any explanations during the course of the meeting. This suited both sides quite well, as neither side wanted a disagreement between the two external counsel over the precise definition of a word during the course of Fox Sports’ presentation.
Tuesday November 13, 2012 • A Tuesday was chosen for the meeting to allow the eight attendees from the Catholic 7 to arrive the day before and have meeting(s) amongst themselves, so as not to impinge on the attendee’s weekend. Upon confirmation of the meeting, Fox Sports had booked eight guest rooms and a Boardroom in a luxurious Manhattan hotel, where the meeting would take place. It went something like this:
10:30-10:35 am – The CEO of Fox Sports welcomes the eight attendees, tells an anecdote or two, tells the attendees who they will be hearing from, and introduces this first speaker (5 min).
10:35-11:00 – George Smiley make the primary presentation (MS PowerPoint), which does NOT include the first offer to the Catholic 7 schools. No Q&A for George (25 min).
11:00-11:20 – Presentation followed by Q&A by Fox Sports’ Vice President of Legal (20 min)
11:20-11:35 – Tea/coffee break (15 min)
11:35-11:50 - Presentation followed by Q&A by Fox Sports’ Vice President of Finance (15 min)
11:55-12:20 - Presentation followed by Q&A by Fox Sports’ Vice President of Marketing (25 min)
12:20-12:30 – Fox Sports’ CEO then presents his offer: an 8-year contract for $3,000,000 per school per year for 10, 11, or 12 schools, with the 3 to 5 additional schools selected by mutual agreement between Fox Sports and the seven Catholic universities. He said he would like the negotiations to begin as soon as practicable and conclude by Friday, December 14th. He added that a further three months would be required for the negotiations to add three to five schools, negotiations for possession of the Big East brand name, and ‘legal scrubbing’ of Final Draft of the TV Rights Contract, leading to a target contract signature date of March 15, 2013 - which by a fortunate coincidence is just before the beginning of the 2013 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, guaranteeing extensive free national TV publicity for the new basketball-centric conference.
Fox Sports CEO knew that the Catholic 7 could not ‘go public’ with his proposal until it was agreed, and the Catholic 7 need to make an official public announcement about splitting away from the Big East before they could begin negotiations with prospective expansion schools. The Catholic 7 needed to be able to tell any prospective expansion school exactly what was on offer from the Catholic 7 and Fox Sports before they could be approached. It was also necessary to ‘go public’ before negotiations could begin with the ‘football’ schools for ownership of the Big East Conference brand name – something that was crucial to the Catholic 7 and Fox Sports.
He then provided information packets to each of the eight attendees, which included his offer in writing and Draft #1 of the proposed TV Rights Contract. Draft 1 was like only 2 or 3 pages, and included only the proposed main section headings - or ‘Articles’, as they were likely called – and below each heading, one or two paragraphs of easy-to read text about would appear in that particular Article.
He then invited the eight attendees to an impressive lunch being served for them in a nearby private dining room in the hotel, giving them the opportunity to discuss his proposals in private. The Fox Sports personnel and their external council then left the hotel, picking up the tab for the eight guest room, the Boardroom, and all meals the attendees had at the hotel.
Wednesday, November 14, 2012 • in the presidents’ offices at each of the seven Catholic schools, their respective Heads of Legal (who attended the meeting) give their presidents their account and impressions of the meeting with Fox Sports, and a copy of Fox Sports contract proposals. It is agreed to postpone telling the universities’ athletic directors about the proposals until the seven presidents have discussed the proposals amongst themselves via conference call and have agreed a common approach. Back in New York, the Big East’s external council is preparing his summary and observations of the meeting he attended the previous day, along with his recommendations going forward.
Thursday, November 15, 2012 • The presidents of the seven Catholic schools receive identical copies of the report by their external counsel, discuss it among themselves, and authorize the external counsel to draft a Letter of Reply for their approval no later than noon on Monday. The external counsel has informed them that $3,000,000 per school per year is a very good opening offer, and that if they opened with that generous of an offer, they must be prepared to go higher, but how much higher is unknown. He recommends a $4,000,000 per schools per year counter-offer. He also recommends trying to extend the contract period from 8 to 12 years to lock in the revenue for as long as practical. His report is well-received.
Friday, November 16, 2012 • The presidents of the seven Catholic schools meet with their seven respective athletic directors (who have been kept in the dark until now) to inform them of their intention to break away from the football schools and start a new basketball-centric conference, financed by Fox Sports. The athletic directors are tasked with creating a short list of suitable expansion candidate schools, with a primary emphasis on near-term basketball success, and the absolute need for secrecy. The last thing the presidents want is for the new conference to get off to a bad start in the 2013-14 season – a view strongly shared by the athletic directors and the head coaches of men’s basketball. The athletic directors have been kept out of the loop until today, because there was no point of widening the circle of secrecy until it was decided by the presidents to proceed with breaking away from the football schools.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012 • The Big East’s external counsel sends a letter to Fox Sport’s CEO to this effect, after its content and wording have been approved by the seven presidents:
“I have been authorized by the presidents of [seven universities named] to inform you that they are receptive of your overtures and wish to pursue negotiations concerning your proposals at your earliest convenience. I have also been authorized to conduct said negotiations on their behalf, as they do not wish to involve themselves directly on such sensitive matters at this stage. The presidents agree to your requested deadline of December 14, 2012 to conclude the negotiations on the agreement, and agree to your target deadline of March 15, 2013 to sign the agreement, assuming all goes well.”
“I am also pleased to forward to you my clients’ proposal concerning same: a 12-year contract for $4,000,000 per school per year for 10, 11, or 12 schools, with the 3 to 5 additional schools selected solely by the seven Catholic universities.. Yours truly, etc., etc.”
Wednesday, November 21, 2012 • Fox Sports’ CEO acknowledges receipt of the counter-proposal, informs the external counsel that he can expect a reply in due course, and wishes counsel a Happy Thanksgiving. Privately, the CEO is furious at the sheer brass neck of the Big East’s counter-offer. He had been expecting a counter-offer of $3.5 million per school per year, to which he would make his final offer of $3.25 million per school per year, to seal the deal. But the Catholic 7, who knew they had the upper hand in the negotiations, were getting downright greedy.
November 22-25, 2012 • Thanksgiving weekend.
Tuesday November 27, 2012 • Tulane to Big East: This is actually happening - Jason Kirk, SB Nation. The Big East becomes a national laughing stock.
Thursday November 29, 2012 • Tulane University officially joins the Big East Conference – to the dismay of the seven Catholic basketball schools.
Tuesday December 4, 2012 • It has now been two weeks since the Big East submitted their counter-offer of $4,000,000 per schools per year, and the Big East presidents are getting very concerned (as was the intention of Fox Sports). The presidents request their external counsel to initiate a phone call to Fox Sports’ external counsel to enquire about their November 20th offer. He does, and informs the presidents that he was told their offer substantially exceeds what Fox Sports is willing to pay for the TV Rights contract, and that is a big problem for Fox. He was alos told to expect a reply from Fox Sports shortly.
Tuesday December 4, 2012 • This is the phone call that Fox Sports’ CEO had been waiting for. The Catholics were jittery, perhaps realizing that they had aimed too high, just as they had done in April 2011 when they scuppered the offer from ESPN with their greed. Now was the precisely right time for Fox Sports to reply.
Tuesday December 4, 2012 • Fox Sports agrees to lengthen contract period, but is not yet ready to give away their input in selecting the expansion schools. Fox Sports submit their second offer to the Big East: a 10-year contract for $3,500,000 per school per year for 10, 11, or 12 schools, with the 3 to 5 additional schools selected by mutual agreement between Fox Sports and the seven Catholic universities. Fox Sports also warns the Big East that they cannot go a penny above $3,500,000 per school per year without having some control over the selection of the expansion schools.
Wednesday December 5, 2012 • Fox Sports receives a second counter-offer from the Catholic 7: a 12-year contract for $3,750,000 per schools per year for 10, 11, or 12 schools, with the 3 to 5 additional schools selected solely by the Big East, but limited to their guaranteed short list of Xavier, Dayton, Saint Louis, Butler, Creighton, and Virginia Commonwealth.
Thursday December 6, 2012 • Fox Sports is happy enough with the six schools on the ‘guaranteed short list’ and replies: “We would be willing to accept your December 5, 2012 offer subject to the Catholic 7 schools obtaining the Big East brand name and all associated legal rights pertaining thereto. If the Catholic 7 are unable or unwilling to obtain the Big East rights, then the specified Contract Amount shall be $3,500,000 per school per year. This is our best and Final Offer.”
Friday December 7, 2012 • External counsel for the Catholic 7 urges the presidents to accept Fox Sports’ Final Offer, and after a brief discussion, they do. A Memorandum of Understanding incorporating what has been agreed is then signed by Fox Sports and the seven university presidents on December 7th.
The deal is finally agreed.
[SIDEBAR #4: Incentive or Leverage?] Recall that on Wednesday, September 19, 2012 • The Board of Directors notify the CEO of their approval of George Smiley’s proposals … subject to the following caveats: ”(4) The Catholic 7 should be ‘strongly encouraged’ to obtain the Big East brand name”. An executive ignores his Board of Directors at his own peril. As part of their negotiation strategy, Fox Sports deliberately did not include an incentive for the Catholic 7 to obtain the Big East brand name, until they presented their ‘Best and Final offer’ to the Catholic 7 presidents. This was because Fox Sports did not want to find themselves involved in an inevitable protracted negotiation over the ‘true value’ of the Big East brand name (which neither side actually knew), so their ‘Best and Final offer’ included a $30 million incentive to the Catholic 7 to obtain the Big East brand name, knowing that it was worth far more than $30 million. Note that the difference between $3,750,000 and $3,500,000 is $250,000 per school per year, and that ($250,000 per school per year)x(10 schools)x(12 years) = $30 million. “Take it or leave it” the Catholic 7 were told on December 6th. They took it.
* * * * *
Saturday afternoon, December 8, 2012 • A press release issued jointly by the seven presidents of the seven Catholic schools stated that they decided to break off from the league.
Sunday night, December 9, 2012 • In an undisclosed location in New York City, Mike Aresco stood in front of a room of seven men -- all of whom wanted to know what was being done to save their institutions. Just 10 days earlier, the latest iteration of the Big East Conference had come to open its arms to Tulane University, another school from a smaller conference replacing a large and powerful football-playing member.
The seven schools -- Seton Hall, St. John's, Villanova, Georgetown, Marquette, DePaul and Providence -- had been wary of the addition but were still willing to stomach it based on the promise of a lucrative television rights contract the conference's commissioner was supposed to be delivering. But three days before the meeting, a CBSSports.com report broke the news that a TV rights deal with the decaying league could be worth as little has half of what the Big East was estimating it would command. It turned out to be the final straw for the league's basketball schools. Enough was enough.
[COMMENTARY]: The timing of the recent external events could not have been better for Fox Sports and Catholic 7 presidents. Recall that on October 30, 2012, the CEO of Fox Sports sent invitations to Catholic 7 presidents to hear their proposal for splitting the Catholic 7 from the Big East in order to form a basketball-centric conference backed by Fox Sports. Total secrecy had been maintained throughout, and as a direct result, the Catholic 7 already had possession of a signed preliminary contract with the relevant numbers filled in. It is clear from what was written at the time that neither Mike Aresco, nor the football schools, nor the sports media had any idea that the Catholic 7 already had a TV Rights contract in place. Sure, they all knew the Catholic 7 were unhappy about a lot of things, but they wouldn’t really quit the Big East in a fit of anger. Surely not. Yet, the sports media portrayed the Catholic 7’s split as a near-spontaneous reaction to Tulane and the fall in market value of the next Big East TV Rights contract. The brave (and perhaps foolhardy) Catholic 7 presidents had taken a giant leap of faith into the unknown, hoping to find some like-minded Catholic soulmate universities with whom to start a new basketball-centric athletic conference, and then go in search of a TV Rights Contract with someone in the spring of 2013.
Except that in the real world of big money, that’s not how things work. The Catholic 7 would never split from the Big East without a TV Rights agreement in hand, as that would be far too risky for them to even contemplate. The sports media of the day clearly did not understand this, and assured their readers that the concept of a new Catholic basketball conference was now in its infancy. They couldn’t have been more wrong.
The Catholic 7 presidents could now openly recruit expansion schools for their new conference, and open formal negotiations with the football schools for the Big East Conference brand name and all associated legal rights pertaining thereto – the Holy Grail of future marketing success – not to mention the Big East’s record book full of impressive accomplishments and National Basketball Championships.
Monday, December 10, 2012 • By now, George Smiley and his staff had heard the news about the Catholic 7 presidents going public with their departure from the Big East on Saturday afternoon. Early on Monday morning, George assembled his entire staff, and thanked the people he had seconded from the marketing, finance, and IT departments. “Your assignments have now been completed, and you have my sincere thanks and appreciation for your tremendous effort and success in the Big East project. Please start packing your things, and the HR Department will be in touch with you by lunchtime to give you your new assignments. The Contract Lawyers will remain with me until mid-March. Your present assignment is to complete the updating of the TV Rights Contract by Friday, December 21st. On January 2nd, you will be joined by many more Fox Sports lawyers to scrub the Final Draft of the contract, and to incorporate new Articles concerning the Big East name, if the Catholic 7 can get it from the football schools. You will also need to review the Article concerning conference expansion and the new 3-5 schools after they are selected by the Catholic 7 schools. Thanks again, and best of luck going forward.”
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History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts
Post #1: History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: May 31, 1979 - December 10, 2012
Post #2: History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: December 11, 2012 – September 4, 2021
Post #3: Present and Future TV Rights Contracts
Post #4: Information about the Big East Universities and Most Likely Expansion Candidates
Post #5: Rankings for Men’s Basketball Expenses
Post #6: Why Xavier, Butler, and Creighton were chosen over Dayton, Saint Louis, and VCU
Post #7: Fieldhouse Flyer’s "You heard it here first" post - September 7, 2021
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Big East Conference Commissioners
May 31, 1979 - June 30, 1990 • Dave Gavitt
July 1, 1990 - June 30, 2009 • Mike Tranghese
July 1, 2009 - May 7, 2012 • John Marinatto
August 14, 2012 - June 30, 2013 • Mike Aresco
July 1, 2013 - present • Val Ackerman
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The Present Fox Sports TV Rights Contract
The Fox Sports TV Rights Contract
New Big East, Fox Sports Formally Ink 12-Year, $500M Deal – Sports Business Journal – March 21, 2013The new Big East yesterday formally inked a 12-year, $500M contract with Fox Sports, a “sum that will rise" to $600M if, "as expected, the league expands to 12 members,” according to Richard Sandomir of the N.Y. TIMES.
($500,000,000)/(12 years) = $41,666,667 per year [total] to the Big East Conference.
($41,666,667/year)/(10 Big East schools) = $4,166,667 per school per year. It will actually be less, as the BE Conference will take about 10% to cover Big East head office salaries and pensions, game officials’ salaries and pensions, travel, meals, and accommodation for all of the preceding personnel, marketing, insurances, consultants, taxes, etc.
..... (0.1)x($4,166,667 per school per year) = $416,667 per school per year ‘contribution’ to the Big East head office.
..... (0.9)x($4,166,667 per school per year) = $3,750,000 to each Big East school per year.
It’s Official! UConn joins the Big East Conference - Dan Madigan, SB Nation - July 1, 2020
On July 1, 2020, the escalator clause in the original 2013 TV Rights contract with Fox Sports was automatically activated, increasing the pro-rata value of the contract from $500M to $550M for the addition of one school, resulting in the annual payments to each of the 11 Big East schools remaining at $3,750,000 to each Big East school per year, with an increase of $416,667 to the Big East head office per year to cover the additional expensed incurred as a result of UConn being added to the conference (more games require more game officials, etc.).
Fox TV Contract Year. Basketball Season
1. 2013-14 . . . . . 7. 2019-20
2. 2014-15 . . . . . 8. 2020-21 (11-member conference)
3. 2015-16 . . . . . 9. 2021-22 (11-member conference)
4. 2016-17 . . . . 10. 2022-23
5. 2017-18 . . . . 11. 2023-24
6. 2018-19 . . . . 12. 2024-25
Contract Law and Specific Performance - Page 32 of the Conference Realignment thread:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------On August 24, 2021 Fieldhouse Flyer wrote:
The present realignment of conferences and schools is just the latest instalment of an ongoing series of events which began in the mid-1950’s, and will continue indefinitely. For more than 2,500 years, there have been self-selected groups of people who have planned, plotted, and schemed to gain an advantage over their rivals. Don’t expect that to change anytime soon.
History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: May 31, 1979 - December 10, 2012
1977 • The College Football Association (CFA) was formed by many of the American colleges with top-level college football programs in order to negotiate contracts with TV networks to televise football games. It was formed by 63 schools from most of the major college football conferences and selected schools whose football programs were independent of any conference. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) had controlled all college football TV rights since the early 1950s. It limited the number of games shown on TV because of a concern that televising more games would hurt attendance. The schools that formed the CFA banded together because of what they viewed as obstructionism of the NCAA by smaller schools. "People were just fed up with the NCAA's parochialism, power grab, etc., but also they wanted more money, they wanted to maximize and they wanted their fans to be able to see them on TV," said James Ponsoldt, a law professor at the University of Georgia. One by one, the major conferences (and Notre Dame, the most prominent independent program) would eventually negotiate their own separate TV deals, reducing the importance of the CFA. The CFA shut down in 1997.
May 31, 1979 • The Big East is established as the country’s first big-time basketball-centric conference.
May 31, 1979 • Dave Gavitt is named first Commissioner of the Big East Conference
June 27, 1984 • The Supreme Court of the United States adjudicated in NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma that the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) television plan violated the Sherman and Clayton Antitrust Acts, which were designed to prohibit group actions that restrained open competition and trade. The case dealt with television rights to college football games, which were controlled by the NCAA and limited the appearance of university teams in each season. The NCAA believed that their control of television rights protected live attendance, which was disputed by a number of colleges. These larger colleges formed the College Football Association to negotiate television contracts, until the NCAA advised the colleges that they would be banned from all NCAA competitions, not just in football. The Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma and the University of Georgia Athletic Association sued to force the NCAA to stop the practice. The Supreme Court held that the NCAA's actions were a restraint of trade and ruled for the universities.
June 21, 1990 • Mike Tranghese is named as second Big East Commissioner. Tranghese, who was Dave Gavitt's right-hand man, was the unanimous choice of the league's athletic directors.
July 2, 1990 • Conference Realignment Could Reshape College Athletics - Mark Maske, The Washington Post - [This epic tome of an article was written more than 31 years ago, but it reads and feels like it could have been written yesterday, and is well worth a look.]
Also see: History of Conference Realignments 1955-1991 – HLOH thread - August 10, 2021
1991 • The first season that the Big East sponsors college football. The Big East becomes the sixth ‘Power 6’ football conference.
February 16, 1994 • CBS: Big East Pact More Than Move To Fill Space - Steve Nidetz, The Chicago Tribune
The breakup of the College Football Association continued Tuesday when the Big East signed a deal with CBS to air football and basketball games through 2001. "We're pleased to get back into college football," said CBS Sports President Neal Pilson, whose network telecast the sport from 1982 to 1990, when ABC won rights to CFA games. While the football contracts won't begin until 1996, when the current CFA deal with ABC ends, CBS will extend its existing Big East basketball deal. The contract, worth approximately $60 million to the Big East, are for the league the way it is constituted now. "Our agreement with the Big East is for the eight schools that play football," CBS Sports President Neal Pilson said. Any changes, added network Vice President Jay Rosenstein, "would be a topic of discussion between us."
February 16, 1994 • Big East Kicks Off TV Deal - Jack Bogaczyk, The Roanoke Times
The Big East Conference took another step toward expansion or explosion Tuesday, when the league's eight football schools agreed to a five-year contract with CBS Sports.
That's because CBS made the deal with the Big East Football Conference, exclusive of six other Big East members that play basketball and non-revenue sports. However, the package also will include men's and women's basketball telecasts for the football eight.
So, if Seton Hall, Villanova, Connecticut, Providence, Georgetown and St. John's do not agree to merge with all-sports members Syracuse, Miami, Pitt and Boston College and football-only players Tech, Temple, Rutgers and West Virginia, the last eight of those will take their money and start a new league.
CBS will pay $69 million for Big East rights. Tranghese said on Tuesday that if the conference chooses to expand to 14 schools, then all 14 would share in the basketball portion of those rights. Without expansion, the basketball fees and appearances would be divided only by the eight current football members.
However, with or without expansion, only the football members will share the football money - which at $56 million to $58 million is the bulk of the package.
August 12, 1994 • Fox Sports is launched.
March 22, 2000 • ABC, ESPN Ink Big East Deal – CBS News
ABC and ESPN have agreed to a seven-year deal worth about $105 million to carry Big East conference football games through 2007. The agreement, which starts with the 2001 season, sees ABC replace CBS as the broadcast network home of the Big East Conference.
August 29, 2006 • Big East, ESPN agree to six-year deal - ESPN
August 30, 2006 • Big East, ESPN Reach New Six-Year Agreements - Villanova.com
June 30, 2009 • Michael Tranghese, the Commissioner of The BIG EAST Conference since 1990 and league’s first full time employee in 1979 retires. Shortly after being named Commissioner, Tranghese directed and oversaw the creation of Big East football, which began competition in 1991.
June 30, 2009 • Mike Tranghese steps down after 19 years as Big East commissioner.
July 1, 2009 • John Marinatto became the third commissioner of the conference. Marinatto will inherit a conference that is stable with membership and television contracts, thanks to the hard work of Tranghese during his tenure.
April, 2012 • At the Big East's spring meetings in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, NBC Sports/Comcast and Fox provided in-depth "pitches" to the league's athletic directors. Sources said the league's AD's were most impressed by the presentations from NBC Sports.
May 26, 2011 • Big East Turns Down ESPN Proposal That Would Have Paid Schools $11M Per Year - Sports Business Journal.
May 26, 2011 • Commissioner John Marinatto turns down 9-year deal with ESPN which would have paid its basketball schools $2.5 million per year.
May 26, 2011 • For Big East, where is all this leading? - Mark Blaudschun, The Boston Globe
The latest issue came this week when the Big East, with its contract for football and men’s basketball with ESPN running out after the 2012-13 season, turned down an offer from the network that insiders say would have paid Big East schools in the neighborhood of $11 million each. ESPN told the Big East that was its best offer.
The Big East power base said, “No. We can wait and get a better offer.’’ That is not likely to happen. In fact, less money might be on the table when the Big East does get around to finalizing its television contract.
Big East Commissioner John Marinatto concedes he is taking a gamble, but he may have a hole card if NBC/Comcast and Fox come in and elevate the offer in the fall of 2012.
“It’s the bottom of the ninth, and we’re at bat,’’ said Marinatto, meaning that all the other conference contracts are done. “We need to get the best deal we can get to help secure our future.’’
Then there is the ongoing basketball/football battle being waged internally in the Big East. The basketball schools are already frustrated by having to make a 16-team work. It could go to 18 and perhaps as many as 20 if some of the football schools get their wish to increase that sport to 12 teams, which would allow for a conference championship game and more money.
A basketball-football split seems a question of when, not if.
September 17, 2011 • Dave Gavitt, Founding Force of the Big East Conference, Dies at 73 - Richard Goldstein, The New York Times
May 7, 2012 • John Marinatto, the third commissioner of the conference, resigns from his position.
2012 • Grumblings about the football schools by the Big East’s Catholic schools become more frequent in local and national news reports.
[SIDEBAR #1: Dates] A good Contracts Lawyer with decades of experience in high-level contract negotiations can read the information available in the public domain and piece together a surprisingly accurate description of what went on behind the scenes, as evidenced by the following informed speculation. Note that the undocumented dates which follow have been calculated with reference to the published key dates of December 8, 2012 and March 19, 2013, and other dates obtained from articles by reputable sources. The undocumented dates were necessarily guided by a detailed knowledge of which things needed to happen in TV Rights Contract negotiations, in which order they had to happen, how long each thing took to accomplish, and the number of people required to accomplish each thing.
[SIDEBAR #2: Secrecy] In TV Rights Contract negotiations (and other large contract negotiations, such as mergers & acquisitions), secrecy during the early stages of the process is of paramount importance. The more people who know about the existence of a potential deal-in-the-making, the greater the risk is that the news will spread to their friends or close associates and eventually make its way to the news media, or an internet or twitter message board, which could well scupper the deal before it has a chance to be made – to the detriment of both interested parties. In this instance, the two primary parties are Fox Sports and the presidents of the Catholic 7 universities. Soon after the initial contact was made by Fox Sports, the “circle in the know” expanded to include the internal heads of legal affairs and athletic directors of the Catholic 7 schools, and external counsel for the seen Catholic universities. It is normal for this period of secrecy to last four to six weeks, as there are many things that need to be discussed among the Catholic 7 themselves, and with Fox Sports – all with the greatest of confidentiality. It was particularly important that the Catholic 7 kept this information from the Big East Conference itself, and from its football schools who were not invited to join Fox Sports’ new college basketball conference.
[SIDEBAR #3: External counsel] “External counsel”, as used in this post, refers specifically to large law firms that have a department which specializes in TV Rights Contracts, and a long track record of successful contract negotiations. It is a very specialized (and expensive) area of law, there would only be about a dozen or so big names in the field. It is quite likely that the external counsel for both Fox Sports and the Catholic 7 schools already knew each other from representing different clients in previous TV Rights Contract negotiations.
May 26-28, 2012 • Memorial Day weekend.
June 4, 2012 • On Monday morning, an executive at Fox Sports (who I’ll call ‘George Smiley’) sat in his office reading the latest article about the mistrust and dissension within the Big East. He knew that Fox Sports was searching for new opportunities in live sports programming, and he wondered out loud: ”What if we paid the Big East’s seven basketball schools to leave the Big East and start a new basketball-centric conference?”. The idea intrigued him, and it was not as mad as it might initially seem, because George aware that:
• The Big East was established as a basketball-centric athletic conference in 1979, and did not sponsor football until 1991.
• As of December 17, 2012, the Big East Conference did not have a television contract beyond the 2013-14 season.
• Under the Big East’s current TV Rights contract, each basketball received $1,500,000 per team per year.
• In April 2011, the 16 Big East schools turned down a deal with ESPN which would have paid its basketball-only schools $2,500,000 per year.
George Smiley thought that Fox Sports should test the waters of live college basketball broadcasts, because he believed that there was a possibility of exploiting the dissatisfaction that the Catholic schools were having with the Big East’s football schools. Three big questions loomed:
(1) “Could the seven Catholic schools be persuaded to split off from the football schools?”
(2) “If so, would they leave for $3,000,000 per school per year?” (double their present payout)
(3) “Could the seven Catholic schools keep the Big East brand name?” (very important for instant credibility, continuity, marketing, etc., etc.)
This marks the beginning of the ‘Conceptual Phase’ of the Big East project.
June 4, 2012 to June 22, 2012 • George Smiley works long hours on his proposal, calling in assistance from colleagues in Fox Sports’ Marketing, Legal, and Finance Departments.
June 11, 2012 • George arranges a meeting with the CEO of Fox Sports on Friday, June 22, 2012 to present his proposals. George is aware that the Second Quarter of 2012 ends on June 30th, and there is quarterly meeting of the Fox Sports; Board of Directors scheduled for early July. George wants to give the CEO the opportunity to consult the Board of Directors before committing big money to George’s proposals, which are still a work-in-progress at this point.
Friday, June 22, 2012 • George’s meeting with the CEO goes well, and he gets the go-ahead, as the CEO decided to have more detail in hand before raising the proposal with the Board. George gets a two-month deadline (to August 24th), and a budget of $200,000 to spend on the initial phases of market research, Due Diligence, and the preparation of Draft #1 of the proposed TV Rights Contract.
The first thing George would have done is to liaise with Fox Sports’ HR manager to quickly assemble an ad hoc staff of internal contract lawyers and experienced specialists in marketing, finance, and IT. The next thing was to place an order with the Nielsen Corporation for college basketball viewership ratings for the Top 75 DMAs for the last five years in the form of a Microsoft Access database. The Nielsen Corporation will sell you any data they have for the right price, and Fox Sports was a regular blue-chip customer.
► Nielsen Designated Market Area (DMA) Rankings for the 210 Largest Markets for 2020 and 2021 – Last updated in March, 2021
► Interactive US Map of Nielsen Media Markets – Last updated in March, 2021
George then turns his attention to the tricky question of: ”How much to offer each school?” to leave the Big East Conference. Fox Sports know they have to offer the Catholic 7 a sufficient financial inducement for them to pull the trigger and sign on the dotted line. It is known that under the 2006 TV Rights contract with ESPN, each Catholic Big East school receives $1,500,000 for basketball. An offer too low would be perceived as an insult, and get things off to a bad start. At the same time, Fox Sports wants to minimize their financial risk on the Big East project – and you minimize risk by extending the lowest possible offer. The bigger the offer to the Catholic 7, the bigger the financial risk to Fox Sports. So essentially, Fox Sports needed to find their optimal position on the risk–return spectrum.
As would be standard practice at Fox Sports, George Smiley and his staff would employ the Monte Carlo method for determining Fox Sports’ ideal bid - and its sensitivity to risk. Eight Monte Carlo models would be constructed – one national market model, and seven regional models (one for each of the DMAs hosting a Big East school). Each Monte Carlo model would have 10 to 20 variables, sorted into categories of college basketball viewership, ad revenue ($ price per minute for TV ads – 60 second slots and 30-second slots) and market penetration. Then the IT staff would convert raw data available into probability density curves (a.k.a., ‘Normal Distribution curves’, and more informally, ‘bell curves’) as the weighting factors for each chosen variable. For those of you who are not familiar with this process, I’ll provide an over-simplified example.
Many of you would be familiar with the formula: (WF1)*(Var1) + (WF2)*(Var2) + (WF3)*(Var3) + (WF4)*(Var4) + (WF5)*(Var5) + . . .
… where WF1 is Weighting Factor No. 1 (usually between 0.1 and 0.9) and Var1 is the name of Variable No. 1
… and (WF1 + WF2 + WF3 + WF4 + WF5 + . . . ) = 1.00
Now, if we replace each decimalized Weighting Factor WF with (WF)*(probability density curve), we get the basis of a Monte Carlo simulation. It is generally accepted that 10,000 iterations of a Monte Carlo simulation will produce reliable results if the input is correct (which can be tricky in most instances).
The results (or outputs) from a number of different bespoke Monte Carlo simulation models would enable George to make the necessary 10-year annual projections of total viewership of Catholic 7 college basketball teqms + 3 more ‘statistically average’ unknown expansion teams (broken down for each of the Top 75 DMAs), projected annual revenue from selling advertising for those games (broken down for each of the Top 75 DMAs), and Annual Operating Costs (both fixed and variable), broken down into each of the 120 months of the Monte Carlo projections. Then, a global Monte Carlo simulation model would be created, using components which had previously been created for each of the bespoke Monte Carlo models – giving George all of the answers he needed. It should be noted that Monte Carlo simulation models are only as good as the assumptions on which they are based, the IT expertise in creating the simulation models, and the care in which raw data is converted into probability density curves. Wrong assumptions, or a poor model, or errors in preparing the probability density curves are certain to lead to significant errors in the ‘numbers’ and recommendations contained in the report that George will personally hand to the Fox Sports CEO on Friday, August 24th. With so much riding on the accuracy of his analyses and projections, George will ensure that everything is checked and double-checked by experienced people with the appropriate expertise. Fox Sports would have a lot of them in-house.
George Smiley prudently assumed that an offer of less than $3,000,000 per school per year would not be well-received by the Catholic 7. But it wasn’t that simple, as more detail was required for the Monte Carlo model. Given that the Catholic 7 were presently getting $1.5 M/school/year, and had turned down ESPN’s reported offer of $2.5 M/school/year, George had to subjectively assign a probability of the Catholic 7 accepting the offer, for offer amounts ranging from $3.00 M/school/year to $4.50 M/school/year (in 15 increments of $100,000) based on the assumption that if the Catholic 7 were offered 3 times as much as they are presently getting, there was a 100% chance of the Catholic 7 accepting an offer of $4.50 M/school/year.
After a very considerable amount of work by George and his staff on the Monte Carlo simulations and sensitivity studies for each variable utilized, he determines that the ‘optimal’ offer is $3,400,000 per school per year, and that the ‘ceiling offer’ is $3,800,000 per school per year. An offer in excess of that amount is deemed to be too risky to offer, thus the term ‘ceiling offer’.
August 14, 2012 • Big East Officially Names Mike Aresco as Commissioner
August 14, 2012 • Big East gets serious about TV efforts – ESPN, feature article by Kristi Dosh, Attorney & Sports Business Analyst
In May 2011, the Big East turned down a TV broadcast rights deal from ESPN reportedly worth $11 million per school -- annually. Rights fees for conferences had been on the rise, and conference leaders were sure waiting for a better offer would pay off in a big way.
Today’s announcement that CBS executive vice president Mike Aresco will become the commissioner of the conference confirms the Big East is making television a priority. Aresco has led programming for CBS since 1996, handling such negotiations as the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and the 15-year SEC contract.
Neal Pilson, former president of CBS Sports, is optimistic about the Big East’s outlook. “If the Big East schools hang together, I believe they can secure a new TV deal equal to or better than the last offer from ESPN, because the media competition for their rights will be intense,” he said.
Friday, August 24, 2012 • George Smiley submits his completed proposal to the CEO. The CEO is impressed with it and is pleased with the numbers George has put together. The CEO schedules a meeting with the Fox Sports Board of Directors in early September to get their approval for the Big East project, and to get budget approval for its implementation.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012 • The CEO makes his presentation to the Fox Sports Board of Directors.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012 • The Board of Directors notify the CEO of their approval of George Smiley’s proposals, and approval of a provisional budget of $3 million for the ‘Development Phase’ of the Big East project, subject to the following caveats: (1) Noting that ”As of December 17, 2012, the Big East Conference did not have a television contract beyond the 2013-14 season”, the Board set a December 15, 2012 deadline for the completion of the TV Rights Contract negotiations with the seven presidents of the Big East’s Catholic schools, and the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding to that effect. (2) Prior to an official announcement of the anticipated deal in mid-December 2012, absolute secrecy must be maintained. If the media, or the Big East officials, or any of the football schools hear of the secret negotiations taking place before the deal is agreed, the project may be aborted on very short notice. (3) Noting the extensive volume of legal work that must be executed after the deal is agreed (by both internal council and external council) which is expected to take three months, the Board set a March 15, 2013 deadline for the signing of the completed (and legally scrubbed) TV Rights Contract by the CEO of Fox Sports and the seven presidents of the Big East’s Catholic schools. (4) The Catholic 7 should be ‘strongly encouraged’ to obtain the Big East brand name.
Thursday, September 20, 2012 • George Smiley is given a substantial budget increase, and a lot more ad hoc staff members.
Friday October 26, 2012 • Big East shopping for new TV deal - Brett McMurphy, ESPN
The Big East will not agree to a media rights deal with ESPN before the end of next week's 60-day exclusivity window, allowing the conference to negotiate with other networks, according to league sources. The Big East now will be free to negotiate its media rights deal with other networks, specifically NBC Sports Network/Comcast, which has shown the most interest in the league, and Fox. In April at the Big East's spring meetings in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., NBC Sports/Comcast and Fox provided in-depth "pitches" to the league's athletic directors. Sources said the league's AD's were most impressed by the presentations from NBC Sports.
The Big East may still end up re-signing with ESPN, but the league is banking on multiple networks bidding on its media rights deal to drive up its worth, league sources said. "We've been having productive discussions with the Big East and hope to continue our longstanding relationship," ESPN spokesperson Josh Krulewitz said. At last week's basketball media days in New York, Big East commissioner Mike Aresco said he was "optimistic about getting something done" with ESPN. "We're talking," Aresco said. "Talks have been good and constructive. They value our product immensely. We value them. We're continuing to talk. We'll see.
The Big East's current six-year media rights deal is worth $3.12 million annually for each of the eight full members and $1.5 million annually for each of the eight non-football members. The eight football members split $13 million; the 16 basketball members split $24 million.
In April of 2011, former Big East commissioner John Marinatto recommended the Big East accept a nine-year deal from ESPN worth $1.17 billion, an average of $130 million annually. That deal would have earned full members $13.8 million a year and non-football members $2.43 million a year. However, the league's presidents voted to turn it down. A $130 million deal per year would be worth $8.8 million each for the 10 full members; $6.5 million each for the four football-only members and $2.3 million each for the seven non-football members.
Tuesday October 30, 2012 • The CEO of Fox Sports sends seven invitations by courier to presidents of the Big East’s seven Catholic schools, requesting their presence, or the presence of their appointed representative, at a meeting in New York on Tuesday, November 13th to hear a proposal concerning Fox Sports’ sincere interest in offering a TV Rights contract exclusively to the seven universities that are not participating in Big East sponsored football. A reply to this invitation is requested no later than Tuesday, November 6th. The invitations spark a conference call between the seven university presidents, who are quite interested to hear Fox Sports’ proposal, and collectively decide to send their Heads of Legal (usually called the universities’ Vice Presidents for Legal Affairs) from each of the seven universities. They also decide to immediately engage external counsel, and have one of that legal firm’s specialists in TV Rights Contracts attend the meeting, for a total of eight attendees.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012 • The seven Big East presidents send their reply to the Fox Sports CEO. Their reply was exactly what Fox Sports had expected.
Wednesday, November 7, 2012 • Fox Sports’ CEO replies to the seven presidents, thanking them for their positive response, and proving more particulars about the meeting. It was then agreed that external counsel for both sides would attend the meeting as observers, meaning that they would not ask questions, they would not answer questions, nor would they provide any explanations during the course of the meeting. This suited both sides quite well, as neither side wanted a disagreement between the two external counsel over the precise definition of a word during the course of Fox Sports’ presentation.
Tuesday November 13, 2012 • A Tuesday was chosen for the meeting to allow the eight attendees from the Catholic 7 to arrive the day before and have meeting(s) amongst themselves, so as not to impinge on the attendee’s weekend. Upon confirmation of the meeting, Fox Sports had booked eight guest rooms and a Boardroom in a luxurious Manhattan hotel, where the meeting would take place. It went something like this:
10:30-10:35 am – The CEO of Fox Sports welcomes the eight attendees, tells an anecdote or two, tells the attendees who they will be hearing from, and introduces this first speaker (5 min).
10:35-11:00 – George Smiley make the primary presentation (MS PowerPoint), which does NOT include the first offer to the Catholic 7 schools. No Q&A for George (25 min).
11:00-11:20 – Presentation followed by Q&A by Fox Sports’ Vice President of Legal (20 min)
11:20-11:35 – Tea/coffee break (15 min)
11:35-11:50 - Presentation followed by Q&A by Fox Sports’ Vice President of Finance (15 min)
11:55-12:20 - Presentation followed by Q&A by Fox Sports’ Vice President of Marketing (25 min)
12:20-12:30 – Fox Sports’ CEO then presents his offer: an 8-year contract for $3,000,000 per school per year for 10, 11, or 12 schools, with the 3 to 5 additional schools selected by mutual agreement between Fox Sports and the seven Catholic universities. He said he would like the negotiations to begin as soon as practicable and conclude by Friday, December 14th. He added that a further three months would be required for the negotiations to add three to five schools, negotiations for possession of the Big East brand name, and ‘legal scrubbing’ of Final Draft of the TV Rights Contract, leading to a target contract signature date of March 15, 2013 - which by a fortunate coincidence is just before the beginning of the 2013 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, guaranteeing extensive free national TV publicity for the new basketball-centric conference.
Fox Sports CEO knew that the Catholic 7 could not ‘go public’ with his proposal until it was agreed, and the Catholic 7 need to make an official public announcement about splitting away from the Big East before they could begin negotiations with prospective expansion schools. The Catholic 7 needed to be able to tell any prospective expansion school exactly what was on offer from the Catholic 7 and Fox Sports before they could be approached. It was also necessary to ‘go public’ before negotiations could begin with the ‘football’ schools for ownership of the Big East Conference brand name – something that was crucial to the Catholic 7 and Fox Sports.
He then provided information packets to each of the eight attendees, which included his offer in writing and Draft #1 of the proposed TV Rights Contract. Draft 1 was like only 2 or 3 pages, and included only the proposed main section headings - or ‘Articles’, as they were likely called – and below each heading, one or two paragraphs of easy-to read text about would appear in that particular Article.
He then invited the eight attendees to an impressive lunch being served for them in a nearby private dining room in the hotel, giving them the opportunity to discuss his proposals in private. The Fox Sports personnel and their external council then left the hotel, picking up the tab for the eight guest room, the Boardroom, and all meals the attendees had at the hotel.
Wednesday, November 14, 2012 • in the presidents’ offices at each of the seven Catholic schools, their respective Heads of Legal (who attended the meeting) give their presidents their account and impressions of the meeting with Fox Sports, and a copy of Fox Sports contract proposals. It is agreed to postpone telling the universities’ athletic directors about the proposals until the seven presidents have discussed the proposals amongst themselves via conference call and have agreed a common approach. Back in New York, the Big East’s external council is preparing his summary and observations of the meeting he attended the previous day, along with his recommendations going forward.
Thursday, November 15, 2012 • The presidents of the seven Catholic schools receive identical copies of the report by their external counsel, discuss it among themselves, and authorize the external counsel to draft a Letter of Reply for their approval no later than noon on Monday. The external counsel has informed them that $3,000,000 per school per year is a very good opening offer, and that if they opened with that generous of an offer, they must be prepared to go higher, but how much higher is unknown. He recommends a $4,000,000 per schools per year counter-offer. He also recommends trying to extend the contract period from 8 to 12 years to lock in the revenue for as long as practical. His report is well-received.
Friday, November 16, 2012 • The presidents of the seven Catholic schools meet with their seven respective athletic directors (who have been kept in the dark until now) to inform them of their intention to break away from the football schools and start a new basketball-centric conference, financed by Fox Sports. The athletic directors are tasked with creating a short list of suitable expansion candidate schools, with a primary emphasis on near-term basketball success, and the absolute need for secrecy. The last thing the presidents want is for the new conference to get off to a bad start in the 2013-14 season – a view strongly shared by the athletic directors and the head coaches of men’s basketball. The athletic directors have been kept out of the loop until today, because there was no point of widening the circle of secrecy until it was decided by the presidents to proceed with breaking away from the football schools.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012 • The Big East’s external counsel sends a letter to Fox Sport’s CEO to this effect, after its content and wording have been approved by the seven presidents:
“I have been authorized by the presidents of [seven universities named] to inform you that they are receptive of your overtures and wish to pursue negotiations concerning your proposals at your earliest convenience. I have also been authorized to conduct said negotiations on their behalf, as they do not wish to involve themselves directly on such sensitive matters at this stage. The presidents agree to your requested deadline of December 14, 2012 to conclude the negotiations on the agreement, and agree to your target deadline of March 15, 2013 to sign the agreement, assuming all goes well.”
“I am also pleased to forward to you my clients’ proposal concerning same: a 12-year contract for $4,000,000 per school per year for 10, 11, or 12 schools, with the 3 to 5 additional schools selected solely by the seven Catholic universities.. Yours truly, etc., etc.”
Wednesday, November 21, 2012 • Fox Sports’ CEO acknowledges receipt of the counter-proposal, informs the external counsel that he can expect a reply in due course, and wishes counsel a Happy Thanksgiving. Privately, the CEO is furious at the sheer brass neck of the Big East’s counter-offer. He had been expecting a counter-offer of $3.5 million per school per year, to which he would make his final offer of $3.25 million per school per year, to seal the deal. But the Catholic 7, who knew they had the upper hand in the negotiations, were getting downright greedy.
On February 10, 2013, SB Nation’s Brian Ewart wrote:
Since they seemingly initiated the split, FOX is willing to pay up for the rights to broadcast the Catholic 7 (plus between three and five additional schools). The most recent ESPN report puts the FOX offer at between $30 and $40 million per year, depending on the final number of schools in the league. That would pay each Catholic 7 member schools between $3.00 million and $3.33 million per year — a significant raise over the $1.5 million or so that each school makes from the current Big East deal.
November 22-25, 2012 • Thanksgiving weekend.
Tuesday November 27, 2012 • Tulane to Big East: This is actually happening - Jason Kirk, SB Nation. The Big East becomes a national laughing stock.
Thursday November 29, 2012 • Tulane University officially joins the Big East Conference – to the dismay of the seven Catholic basketball schools.
Tuesday December 4, 2012 • It has now been two weeks since the Big East submitted their counter-offer of $4,000,000 per schools per year, and the Big East presidents are getting very concerned (as was the intention of Fox Sports). The presidents request their external counsel to initiate a phone call to Fox Sports’ external counsel to enquire about their November 20th offer. He does, and informs the presidents that he was told their offer substantially exceeds what Fox Sports is willing to pay for the TV Rights contract, and that is a big problem for Fox. He was alos told to expect a reply from Fox Sports shortly.
Tuesday December 4, 2012 • This is the phone call that Fox Sports’ CEO had been waiting for. The Catholics were jittery, perhaps realizing that they had aimed too high, just as they had done in April 2011 when they scuppered the offer from ESPN with their greed. Now was the precisely right time for Fox Sports to reply.
Tuesday December 4, 2012 • Fox Sports agrees to lengthen contract period, but is not yet ready to give away their input in selecting the expansion schools. Fox Sports submit their second offer to the Big East: a 10-year contract for $3,500,000 per school per year for 10, 11, or 12 schools, with the 3 to 5 additional schools selected by mutual agreement between Fox Sports and the seven Catholic universities. Fox Sports also warns the Big East that they cannot go a penny above $3,500,000 per school per year without having some control over the selection of the expansion schools.
Wednesday December 5, 2012 • Fox Sports receives a second counter-offer from the Catholic 7: a 12-year contract for $3,750,000 per schools per year for 10, 11, or 12 schools, with the 3 to 5 additional schools selected solely by the Big East, but limited to their guaranteed short list of Xavier, Dayton, Saint Louis, Butler, Creighton, and Virginia Commonwealth.
Thursday December 6, 2012 • Fox Sports is happy enough with the six schools on the ‘guaranteed short list’ and replies: “We would be willing to accept your December 5, 2012 offer subject to the Catholic 7 schools obtaining the Big East brand name and all associated legal rights pertaining thereto. If the Catholic 7 are unable or unwilling to obtain the Big East rights, then the specified Contract Amount shall be $3,500,000 per school per year. This is our best and Final Offer.”
Friday December 7, 2012 • External counsel for the Catholic 7 urges the presidents to accept Fox Sports’ Final Offer, and after a brief discussion, they do. A Memorandum of Understanding incorporating what has been agreed is then signed by Fox Sports and the seven university presidents on December 7th.
The deal is finally agreed.
[SIDEBAR #4: Incentive or Leverage?] Recall that on Wednesday, September 19, 2012 • The Board of Directors notify the CEO of their approval of George Smiley’s proposals … subject to the following caveats: ”(4) The Catholic 7 should be ‘strongly encouraged’ to obtain the Big East brand name”. An executive ignores his Board of Directors at his own peril. As part of their negotiation strategy, Fox Sports deliberately did not include an incentive for the Catholic 7 to obtain the Big East brand name, until they presented their ‘Best and Final offer’ to the Catholic 7 presidents. This was because Fox Sports did not want to find themselves involved in an inevitable protracted negotiation over the ‘true value’ of the Big East brand name (which neither side actually knew), so their ‘Best and Final offer’ included a $30 million incentive to the Catholic 7 to obtain the Big East brand name, knowing that it was worth far more than $30 million. Note that the difference between $3,750,000 and $3,500,000 is $250,000 per school per year, and that ($250,000 per school per year)x(10 schools)x(12 years) = $30 million. “Take it or leave it” the Catholic 7 were told on December 6th. They took it.
* * * * *
Saturday afternoon, December 8, 2012 • A press release issued jointly by the seven presidents of the seven Catholic schools stated that they decided to break off from the league.
Sunday night, December 9, 2012 • In an undisclosed location in New York City, Mike Aresco stood in front of a room of seven men -- all of whom wanted to know what was being done to save their institutions. Just 10 days earlier, the latest iteration of the Big East Conference had come to open its arms to Tulane University, another school from a smaller conference replacing a large and powerful football-playing member.
The seven schools -- Seton Hall, St. John's, Villanova, Georgetown, Marquette, DePaul and Providence -- had been wary of the addition but were still willing to stomach it based on the promise of a lucrative television rights contract the conference's commissioner was supposed to be delivering. But three days before the meeting, a CBSSports.com report broke the news that a TV rights deal with the decaying league could be worth as little has half of what the Big East was estimating it would command. It turned out to be the final straw for the league's basketball schools. Enough was enough.
[COMMENTARY]: The timing of the recent external events could not have been better for Fox Sports and Catholic 7 presidents. Recall that on October 30, 2012, the CEO of Fox Sports sent invitations to Catholic 7 presidents to hear their proposal for splitting the Catholic 7 from the Big East in order to form a basketball-centric conference backed by Fox Sports. Total secrecy had been maintained throughout, and as a direct result, the Catholic 7 already had possession of a signed preliminary contract with the relevant numbers filled in. It is clear from what was written at the time that neither Mike Aresco, nor the football schools, nor the sports media had any idea that the Catholic 7 already had a TV Rights contract in place. Sure, they all knew the Catholic 7 were unhappy about a lot of things, but they wouldn’t really quit the Big East in a fit of anger. Surely not. Yet, the sports media portrayed the Catholic 7’s split as a near-spontaneous reaction to Tulane and the fall in market value of the next Big East TV Rights contract. The brave (and perhaps foolhardy) Catholic 7 presidents had taken a giant leap of faith into the unknown, hoping to find some like-minded Catholic soulmate universities with whom to start a new basketball-centric athletic conference, and then go in search of a TV Rights Contract with someone in the spring of 2013.
Except that in the real world of big money, that’s not how things work. The Catholic 7 would never split from the Big East without a TV Rights agreement in hand, as that would be far too risky for them to even contemplate. The sports media of the day clearly did not understand this, and assured their readers that the concept of a new Catholic basketball conference was now in its infancy. They couldn’t have been more wrong.
The Catholic 7 presidents could now openly recruit expansion schools for their new conference, and open formal negotiations with the football schools for the Big East Conference brand name and all associated legal rights pertaining thereto – the Holy Grail of future marketing success – not to mention the Big East’s record book full of impressive accomplishments and National Basketball Championships.
Monday, December 10, 2012 • By now, George Smiley and his staff had heard the news about the Catholic 7 presidents going public with their departure from the Big East on Saturday afternoon. Early on Monday morning, George assembled his entire staff, and thanked the people he had seconded from the marketing, finance, and IT departments. “Your assignments have now been completed, and you have my sincere thanks and appreciation for your tremendous effort and success in the Big East project. Please start packing your things, and the HR Department will be in touch with you by lunchtime to give you your new assignments. The Contract Lawyers will remain with me until mid-March. Your present assignment is to complete the updating of the TV Rights Contract by Friday, December 21st. On January 2nd, you will be joined by many more Fox Sports lawyers to scrub the Final Draft of the contract, and to incorporate new Articles concerning the Big East name, if the Catholic 7 can get it from the football schools. You will also need to review the Article concerning conference expansion and the new 3-5 schools after they are selected by the Catholic 7 schools. Thanks again, and best of luck going forward.”
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Last edited by Fieldhouse Flyer on Fri Sep 10, 2021 12:03 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Fieldhouse Flyer - Posts: 1389
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Re: History of the Big East Conference and TV Rights Contrac
by Fieldhouse Flyer » Tue Aug 24, 2021 10:24 am
Post #2
History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts
Post #1: History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: May 31, 1979 - December 10, 2012
Post #2: History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: December 11, 2012 – September 4, 2021
Post #3: Present and Future TV Rights Contracts
Post #4: Information about the Big East Universities and Most Likely Expansion Candidates
Post #6: Why Xavier, Butler, and Creighton were chosen over Dayton, Saint Louis, and VCU
Post #7: Fieldhouse Flyer’s "You heard it here first" post - September 7, 2021
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History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: December 11, 2012 – September 4, 2021
December 11, 2012 • Big East fate vexes Catholic schools - Andy Katz and Brett McMurphy, ESPN
December 11, 2012 • Big East Catholic schools choose to leave conference – SB Nation Staff
December 11, 2012 • Big East basketball schools reportedly hold meeting to discuss future – Mike Rutherford, SB Nation
December 13, 2012 • Xavier, Butler will join Big East Catholic 7, according to report – Mike Rutherford, SB Nation
December 13, 2012 • As Big East Catholic schools prepare to break away, key issues emerge – Pete Thamel, SI.com
December 13, 2012 • Catholic 7 Retain Big East Name, Begin Play Next Season? – SB Nation/Villanova Basketball
December 15, 2012 • 'Catholic 7' announce official departure from Big East - Nicole Auerbach, USA TODAY
December 16, 2012 • A look at the potential candidates to join 'Catholic 7' - Scott M. Gleeson, USA TODAY
December 16, 2012 • BIG EAST RENEGADES FIGURING OUT FUTURE – FOX SPORTS Feature Article
Here is another epic tome (excerpted above) that is well worth reading:
December 17, 2012 • How Big East's basketball schools decided to finally break off to form their own conference - Brendan Prunty, The Star-Ledger
December 13, 2012 • Big East Conference breakup: How it happened – SB Nation
December 22, 2012 • Catholic 7 league expected to add Xavier, Butler, Creighton, Dayton - JP Starkey, SB Nation
Saturday December 22, 2012 - Tuesday January 1, 2013 • Christmas Break
December 29, 2012 • College conference realignment: The TV money game in 2013 and beyond - Samuel Chi, SB Nation
Wednesday January 2, 2013 • George Smiley’s team of Contracts Lawyers faithfully completed their assignments before the Christmas break. This morning, a dozen more Fox Sports Contracts Lawyers joined George’s team to begin the unenviable and arduous task of scrubbing the TV Rights Contract.
I am assuming that very few of you have ever seen the text of a $500 million contract. It looks like this:
RULES COMMITTEE PRINT 116–68 • TEXT OF THE HOUSE AMENDMENT TO THE SENATE AMENDMENT TO H.R. 133 – U.S. Congress – December 21, 2020
(a 5,593-page .pdf document.)
$500 million contracts are written in the exact same style and format as U.S. legislation, with the following exceptions: (1) a contract does not have the line numbers printed on the left and right sides of the text, and (2) there are about 10 times as many words on each page of a $500 million contract (10-point font, 1.1 sentence spacing, and 1.5 paragraph spacing), which runs to hundreds of pages.
$500 million contracts are written by experienced Contracts Lawyers and are intended to be understood only by other experienced lawyers. That’s the way the game works. External counsel cannot charge their clients $400 per man-hour for something that is easy, and scrubbing a $500 million contract is the exact opposite of ‘easy’. It is difficult beyond the comprehension of most people. ‘Scrubbing’ means to ensure that there is not as much as a single error in the text – anywhere. A $500 million contract is a web of hundreds or even thousands of cross-referenced Articles, Paragraphs, Subparagraphs, Clauses, and Subclauses – all tied together with extensive cross-referencing. Each cross-reference has to be meticulously checked to ensure that it is the correct article, paragraph, subparagraph, clause, or subclause, and most of them cross-reference another article, paragraph, subparagraph, clause, or subclause. The scrubber (legal reviewer) has to know exactly what each article, paragraph, subparagraph, clause, or subclause really means, and keep all of these things in his (or her) head while reviewing the text. After a couple of days, the number of things the scrubber has to simultaneously keep in his (or her) head exceeds 1,000. Then, it gets even more complicated. Errors are found, corrected, and notified to the other parties. These corrections can cause knock-on errors to things that were previously correct (and scrubbed), but are now longer correct because of the previous correction(s) made. The trickiest part is ‘omissions’. It’s much easier to spot an error in the text than it is to spot something that is missing but should be there. On and on it goes. I can continue with further detail, but you get the point.
There will be four independent teams of scrubbers for the Fox Sport/Big East TV Rights Contract – (1) Fox Sports internal lawyers, (2) Fox Sports external counsel, (3) Catholic 7 internal lawyers, and (4) Catholic 7 external counsel. The reason it is so important to have an error-free contract is that if something is incorrect or missing from the contract, and a situation or dispute occurs where that particular article, paragraph, subparagraph, clause, or subclause, it can end up in court, where such cases can be long and expensive to adjudicate. If there are a lot of errors in a contract, that can mean a lot of expensive court cases in the years to come – an avoidable big expense if the Contract is thoroughly scrubbed and error-free. That is a big advantage for both sides, and that is why both sides are willing to pay so much for external counsel to scrub the contract. Insurances are another minefield I won’t even comment on, other than to say it is also a lot more complicated than you might imagine.
Consider this: (20 Contract Law specialists)x($400/hour)x(40 hours/week)x(8 weeks) = $2,560,000 cost to each side for external counsel scrubbing. The cost of internal lawyers’ scrubbing to each side would be less than half of that, because it would be less thorough (fewer experienced lawyers available), and internal lawyers would be paid significantly less per hour than external counsel. But the internal cost could easily approach $1 million for each side.
Feb. 10, 2013 • Fox approached C7 while still in Big East. They have a greater need, so will pay more. Leagues only worth what someone will pay.
- Brett McMurphy, ESPN
February 10, 2013 • Did FOX Sports create the Catholic-7 split? – Brian Ewart, SB Nation/Villanova Basketball
February 10, 2013 • Big East gets NBC offer – Brett McMurphy and Andy Katz, ESPN
Tuesday March 5, 2013 • Fox officially announces creation of 24-hour sports network, Fox Sports 1 - Hillary Busis, Entertainment Weekly
Wednesday March 6, 2013 • Fox Sports 1 must succeed on its own terms before challenging ESPN - Steve Lepore, SB Nation
Friday March 8, 2013 • Big East Agrees to Sell Name to Breakaway Group of 7 - Richard Sandomir, The New York Times
[SIDEBAR #4: Incentive or Leverage?]: Fox Sports ‘Best and Final offer’ included a $30 million incentive to the Big East to obtain the brand name, knowing that it was worth far more than $30 million. Note that the difference between $3,750,000 and $3,500,000 is $250,000 per school per year, and that ($250,000 per school per year)x(10 schools)x(12 years) = $30 million.
Friday March 8, 2013 • Big East, Catholic 7 confirm split is official - Daniel Uthman, USA TODAY
Wednesday March 13, 2013 • Butler, Dayton, Xavier to Join Big East Next Season - Lenn Robbins, New York Post
Friday March 15, 2013 • The final scrubbing of the 2013 TV Rights Contract between Fox Sports the Big East Conference is completed. Dozens of copies of the 560-page contract are printed, with three copies dispatched by couriers to each of the ten university presidents for individual signings on Monday March 18th, which will be verified by live video links of the actual signings. In due course (over the next several months), every one of the first-run copies of the contract will bear all eleven signatures, with three copies permanently residing at each university.
Sunday March 17, 2013 • Record-Setting Nine Atlantic 10 Teams Earn Postseason Bids - Atlantic10.com
Monday March 18, 2013 • The 2013 TV Rights Contract between Fox Sports and the Big East Conference is secretly signedby the CEO of Fox Sports and the ten presidents of the new Big East Conference institutions in advance of Tuesday’s announcement of same on Fox News’ 5:00 PM News Headlines.
Monday March 18, 2013 • 2013 Final AP Men's Basketball Poll – Associated Press
2012–13 Big East Conference Men's Basketball Season including Final Conference Standings and Postseason. - Wikipedia
2013 Big East Men's Basketball Tournament
Tuesday March 19 and Wednesday March 20, 2013 • The 2013 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament begins with four games at UD Arena in Dayton. The 68-team field includes #2 seed Georgetown (23–8), #3 Marquette (23–8), and #9 Villanova (20–13) as well as #6 Butler (Atlantic 10; 26–8) and #7 Creighton (Missouri Valley; 27–7).
Tuesday March 19, 2013 - 4:52 pm ET • Butler, Creighton, Xavier join new Big East – Fox Sports
March 20, 2013 • Big East adds Butler, Xavier and Creighton to Catholic 7, signs 12-year deal with Fox – Liz Clarke, The Washington Post
March 20, 2013 • Big East to add Butler, Creighton, Xavier in 2013 – SI.com Staff
March 20, 2013 • New Big East adds Butler, 2 others – Kieran Darcy, ESPN [”2 others” ??? Sour grapes, ESPN ???]
March 21, 2013 • New Big East, Fox Sports Formally Ink 12-Year, $500M Deal – Sports Business Journal
* * * * *
June 10, 2013 • Bleak ratings outlook for Big East and FOX Sports 1 - Andrei Greska, Paint Touches (Marquette basketball)
June 19, 2013 • Analysis of 2013 Big East TV Ratings - Andrei Greska, Paint Touches (Marquette basketball)
June 26, 2013 • Val Ackerman is named as the fifth Commissioner of the Big East Conference.
June 30, 2013 • Mike Aresco officially resigns as Commissioner of the Big East Conference.
July 1, 2013 • The split between the seven Catholic basketball schools and the football schools comes into legal effect.
July 1, 2013 • Mike Aresco becomes the first Commissioner of the new football-centric conference.
July 1, 2013 • Val Ackerman’s appointment as the fifth Commissioner of the Big East Conference comes into effect.
July 3, 2013 • Brad Stevens leaving Butler for NBA's Boston Celtics - Roger Kuznia, The Sporting News
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September 6, 2013 • Fox Sports 1 gambles with massive Big East basketball deal - Steve Lepore, SB Nation
Please recall my entry dated June 4, 2012 • On Monday morning, an executive at Fox Sports (who I’ll call ‘George Smiley’) sat in his office reading the latest article about mistrust and dissension within the Big East. He wondered out loud: ”What if we paid the Big East’s seven basketball schools to leave the Big East and start a new basketball-centric conference?”. The idea intrigued him …
November 8, 2013 • In the evening, George Smiley pours himself a cold beer, turns on the TV, and waits for tip-off at the Dunkin' Donuts Center with a big smile on his face.
November 8, 2013 • Providence Friars Open Regular Season With 82-78 Overtime Win Against Boston College – ProvidenceFriars.com
2013–14 Big East Conference Men's Basketball Season including Final Conference Standings and Postseason. - Wikipedia
2014 Big East Men's Basketball Tournament - Wikipedia
March 17, 2014 • TV Ratings: Big East Championship Down 80% on FS1 - SportsMediaWatch
April 8, 2014 • Big East, FOX Sports 1 ratings pick up steam in March - Andrei Greska, Paint Touches (Marquette basketball)
February 8, 2015 • Big East basketball not scoring for Fox/Fox Sports 1 - Ken Fang, AwfulAnnouncing
2014–15 Big East Conference Men's Basketball Season including Final Conference Standings and Postseason. - Wikipedia
2015 Big East Men's Basketball Tournament - Wikipedia
March 23, 2015 • Negative trends for FOX Sports 1, Big East in 2015 - Andrei Greska, Paint Touches (Marquette basketball)
March 26, 2015 • TV ratings for Big East Tourney fall - Joe Pollicino, The Georgetown Voice
June 2, 2015 • UD Basketball Again Delivers Strong Television Ratings – Dayton Flyers.com
February, 2016 • Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman said: "The Big East was currently not in the market for more programs", and that if it was, geography would play a decisive role in determining any addition of members.
March 9, 2016 • Dayton Moves up to Sixth Among Top College Basketball TV Markets – Dayton Flyers.com
2015–16 Big East Conference Men's Basketball Season including Final Conference Standings and Postseason. - Wikipedia
2016 Big East Men's Basketball Tournament – Wikipedia
April 4, 2016 • CHAMPS! Jenkins' buzzer-beater delivers championship for Nova – Villanova University
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November 2, 2016 • Best Traveling Fans | High Five – NCAA.com Video (2 min. 20 sec.)
November 3, 2016 • NCAA.com puts UD No. 1 for the Best Traveling Fans – University of Dayton
2016–17 Big East Conference Men's Basketball Season including Final Conference Standings and Postseason. - Wikipedia
2017 Big East Men's Basketball Tournament - Wikipedia
March 23, 2017 • BIG EAST Enjoys Most-Watched Season on FOX Sports Family of Networks – FoxSports.com
2017–18 Big East Conference Men's Basketball Season including Final Conference Standings and Postseason. - Wikipedia
2018 Big East Men's Basketball Tournament - Wikipedia
March 21, 2018 • FOX Sports Nets Most-Watched College Basketball Season Ever – FoxSports.com
April 2, 2018 • Champions Again! Wildcats Top Michigan, 79-62 – Villanova University
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2018–19 Big East Conference Men's Basketball Season including Final Conference Standings and Postseason. - Wikipedia
2019 Big East Men's Basketball Tournament - Wikipedia
March 12, 2019 • FOX Sports Nets Most-Watched College Hoops Regular Season Ever – FoxSports.com
June 26, 2019 • UConn leaving AAC after accepting invitation to join Big East Conference - Matt Norlander, CBS Sports
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2019–20 Big East Conference Men's Basketball Season including Final Conference Standings and Postseason. - Wikipedia
2020 Big East Men's Basketball Tournament – Wikipedia
March 15, 2020 • SPORTSLINE 2020 NCAA TOURNAMENT SIMULATION: DAYTON'S ROAD TO THE CHAMPIONSHIP - Matt Severance, SportsLine.com
March 15, 2020 • Simulation Sunday: How Dayton won the 2020 NCAA Tournament in SportsLine's projections - Kyle Boone, CBS Sports
April 6, 2020 • NCAA Tournament simulation: Dayton wins first title as SportsLine simulates entire Big Dance - David Cobb, CBS Sports
June 30, 2020 • How UConn ended up back in the Big East - Daniel Connolly and Dan Madigan, SB Nation/UConn
July 1, 2020 • UConn officially rejoins Big East after seven-year absence - Jeff Borzello, ESPN [As per the Big East’s original 2013 TV Rights contract with Fox Sports, UConn is now on the Big East payroll, receiving $3,750,000 each year until the expiry of the contract in 2025.]
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October 14, 2020 • First Four Remains In Dayton Through 2026 – University of Dayton
January 26, 2021 • Big East commissioner Val Ackerman signs 3-year extension to June 2024 – Associated Press / ESPN
2020–21 Big East Conference Men's Basketball Season including Final Conference Standings and Postseason. - Wikipedia
2021 Big East Men's Basketball Tournament – Wikipedia
March, 2021 • Fewer viewers for Selection Show, conference title games - SportsMediaWatch
April, 2021 • NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Championship game viewers from 2013 to 2021 - Statista.com
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History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts
Post #1: History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: May 31, 1979 - December 10, 2012
Post #2: History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: December 11, 2012 – September 4, 2021
Post #3: Present and Future TV Rights Contracts
Post #4: Information about the Big East Universities and Most Likely Expansion Candidates
Post #6: Why Xavier, Butler, and Creighton were chosen over Dayton, Saint Louis, and VCU
Post #7: Fieldhouse Flyer’s "You heard it here first" post - September 7, 2021
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History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: December 11, 2012 – September 4, 2021
December 11, 2012 • Big East fate vexes Catholic schools - Andy Katz and Brett McMurphy, ESPN
December 11, 2012 • Big East Catholic schools choose to leave conference – SB Nation Staff
December 11, 2012 • Big East basketball schools reportedly hold meeting to discuss future – Mike Rutherford, SB Nation
The meeting in New York has already sparked rumors that the seven schools (DePaul, Georgetown, Marquette, Providence, Seton Hall, St. John's and Villanova) could split from the Big East's FBS schools and form their own conference. "It's too early to say on that,'' a source told ESPN.com.
If the seven schools do elect to split from the Big East, they would almost certainly look to invite other traditionally successful basketball programs that do not play FBS football. Potential candidates would likely begin with A-10 powers like Xavier, Butler, Saint Louis, Dayton, and Virginia Commonwealth.
December 13, 2012 • Xavier, Butler will join Big East Catholic 7, according to report – Mike Rutherford, SB Nation
Xavier University and Butler University will reportedly be joining the Catholic 7 schools that are breaking away from the Big East, according to Michael Hunt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The Musketeers and Bulldogs, who both play in the Atlantic 10, may be joined by either one or three other schools to form a new, 10-12 team, basketball-centric conference. Those teams are reportedly Creighton, Virginia Commonwealth, Dayton, and Saint Louis.
December 13, 2012 • As Big East Catholic schools prepare to break away, key issues emerge – Pete Thamel, SI.com
The departure of the seven Catholic Big East basketball schools from the league appears to be inching toward inevitability. "I think it's certain the seven schools will leave, barring some substantial financial or legal impediment," a source with direct knowledge of the situation told SI.com.
A cadre of Atlantic-10 schools, including Xavier, Butler, Dayton, and Saint Louis, along with Creighton of the Missouri Valley Conference are the most likely candidates. The move could potentially attract more money for the schools than the current $1.6 million they receive from television. (The potential fate of the NCAA tournament units of the schools are a significant unresolved financial issue.)
December 13, 2012 • Catholic 7 Retain Big East Name, Begin Play Next Season? – SB Nation/Villanova Basketball
December 15, 2012 • 'Catholic 7' announce official departure from Big East - Nicole Auerbach, USA TODAY
December 16, 2012 • A look at the potential candidates to join 'Catholic 7' - Scott M. Gleeson, USA TODAY
Xavier: The Milwaukee-Journal Sentinel reported last week that Xavier and Butler of the Atlantic 10 were the strongest candidates to join the seven departing Big East schools based on their basketball prowess. Xavier, a Jesuit Catholic university with 23 NCAA tournament appearances in its history, is strikingly similar to many of the departed Big East schools. Atlantic 10 university presidents are scheduled to meet next week "with the intent of solidifying commitments of its membership," via The Cincinnati Enquirer.
Butler: It would seem that Butler would be the last team on the planet to want switch conferences after joining the A-10 this season following its move from the Horizon League. But in many ways Butler would be a perfect fit, meeting the suggested criteria of a new 10-12 league. Butler's a private school with a rich hoops history that includes back-to-back Final Fours.
Creighton: The Bluejays are another ideal fit for a new league. The Jesuit Catholic university is one of the best-known schools in the Missouri Valley Conference, one of the top mid-major leagues in the country. Creighton has been in the national spotlight recently thanks to player of the year candidate Doug McDermott, but the school has a rich hoops history and draws over 17,000 fans per game in Omaha. Longtime Missouri Valley beat writer Dave Reynolds of the Peoria Journal Star reported Saturday that MVC university presidents planned a conference call to discuss the ramifications on the Valley should Creighton leave. The New York Post reported Creighton had been contacted by a representative of the seven east coast Catholic institutions. Creighton athletics officials were contacted by USA TODAY Sports on Thursday and denied any contact with a new league and declined to comment on the topic of conference realignment.
Saint Louis/Dayton: The New York Post reported that not only Butler and Xavier were likely candidates to leave the A-10 for a newly formed league but that Saint Louis and Dayton would be contacted as well. The report used the term "one foot out the door" when describing the possible departure of A-10 teams. The seven schools are reportedly looking to add five teams to have a 12-team league with Eastern and Western Divisions. Saint Louis and Dayton could join Butler, DePaul, Marquette and Xavier to form a Western Division. Both Saint Louis, a Jesuit university, and Dayton, a Marianist Catholic university, are both solid fits with relatively strong hoops traditions. If Xavier were to jump ship in the A-10, Dayton would be likely to follow considering the teams' rivalry.
Other Candidates:
Virginia Commonwealth is another school that has transitioned away from an upstart mid-major and is becoming an NCAA tournament regular. Its up-and-coming basketball program is the biggest draw to the Big East schools. But like Butler, it's difficult to envision a conference move after Shaka Smart and the Rams just switched from the CAA.
December 16, 2012 • BIG EAST RENEGADES FIGURING OUT FUTURE – FOX SPORTS Feature Article
There is no true timetable for any of those decisions. Like so many of these reshaped conferences that stretch from coast to coast, this new league won't be confined to Eastern teams. Xavier, Butler, Dayton, Creighton, and Gonzaga, way out in Spokane, Washington, also don't play major college football and would be natural fits to align with these Catholic schools. The league also will consider non-denominational schools, as well.
Here is another epic tome (excerpted above) that is well worth reading:
December 17, 2012 • How Big East's basketball schools decided to finally break off to form their own conference - Brendan Prunty, The Star-Ledger
On Sunday night, December 9, 2012, in an undisclosed location in New York City, Mike Aresco stood in front of a room of seven men -- all of whom wanted to know what was being done to save their institutions. Just 10 days earlier, the latest iteration of the Big East Conference had come to open its arms to Tulane University, another school from a smaller conference replacing a large and powerful football-playing member.
Part I: The Past
Part II: The PresentREVERSE REALIGNMENT
The most ironic piece to the seven schools' plan to break away from the rest of the Big East is that in order to survive, they must expand themselves -- thus, doing the same thing that necessitated their departure in the first place. Individuals who are familiar with the thinking of the basketball-only schools have already begun to identify potential targets to bolster their ranks as early as the middle of last week. Atlantic 10 schools – Xavier, Dayton, Saint Louis and Butler -- are on the list, as is Missouri Valley Conference member Creighton.
The seven schools are most high on Xavier, which has long been a target of expansion talks of the Big East. But with Creighton's emergence as a consistent, national basketball power, the Bluejays are expected to have a large amount of support. Same for Butler, which made back-to-back National Championship game appearances in 2010 and 2011 and moved up from the Horizon League to the Atlantic 10 this season.
Before any invitations are extended, there must be a decision on the size of the new league. The current consensus is to have a 12-team league.
The feeling among the head coaches of the seven schools making the move is that it allows the league to be able to still draw a sizable portion of automatic and at-large NCAA Tournament bids, while still keeping all teams relevant. There is a chance that a 14- or even 16-team league could be an option, but, as one person put it: "That puts this league right back into the same situation we have in the Big East -- it's too big."
Part III: The Future
December 13, 2012 • Big East Conference breakup: How it happened – SB Nation
December 22, 2012 • Catholic 7 league expected to add Xavier, Butler, Creighton, Dayton - JP Starkey, SB Nation
Saturday December 22, 2012 - Tuesday January 1, 2013 • Christmas Break
December 29, 2012 • College conference realignment: The TV money game in 2013 and beyond - Samuel Chi, SB Nation
College football has gotten in on the act, with the five major conferences each inking billion-dollar deals in the past two years. The annual payouts roughly go like this:
Pac-12: $250 million ($20.83 million per school)
Big Ten: $248 million ($20.67 million)
Big 12: $200 million ($20 million)
ACC: $240 million ($17.14 million)
SEC: $205 million ($14.64 million)
Notre Dame: $15 million
So who's missing here? Yep, the Big East, the erstwhile member of the big boys' club that's about to get tossed out on its ear after the 2013 season.
The Big East was essentially done in by its own greed. In April 2011, the much-maligned former commissioner John Marinatto had a nine-year, $1.17 billion deal with ESPN on the table, which would've paid its full members about $13.8 million per season and the basketball-only schools $2.5 million. While it wasn't Big Ten money, it was more than commensurate with what the Big East was worth.
But the Big East presidents, including the ones in the "Catholic 7," rejected the deal, thinking they would be able to squeeze more out of it. Turns out, it was a gargantuan miscalculation that left the Big East in today's mess.
The Big East's current TV deal expires after this basketball season and the next football season. With the mass defections this past month, the value of that next contract is dwindling, and no network is all that eager to jump in to make a deal when more schools might abandon ship before long. The latest estimate has the conference getting about $40-$50 million per year - and that's assuming everybody stays put. An optimistic model of $50 million yields a payout of about $4.17 million per year for the nine full members.
As for the Big East, being demoted in the new BCS landscape is the lesser of its problems …
Wednesday January 2, 2013 • George Smiley’s team of Contracts Lawyers faithfully completed their assignments before the Christmas break. This morning, a dozen more Fox Sports Contracts Lawyers joined George’s team to begin the unenviable and arduous task of scrubbing the TV Rights Contract.
I am assuming that very few of you have ever seen the text of a $500 million contract. It looks like this:
RULES COMMITTEE PRINT 116–68 • TEXT OF THE HOUSE AMENDMENT TO THE SENATE AMENDMENT TO H.R. 133 – U.S. Congress – December 21, 2020
(a 5,593-page .pdf document.)
$500 million contracts are written in the exact same style and format as U.S. legislation, with the following exceptions: (1) a contract does not have the line numbers printed on the left and right sides of the text, and (2) there are about 10 times as many words on each page of a $500 million contract (10-point font, 1.1 sentence spacing, and 1.5 paragraph spacing), which runs to hundreds of pages.
$500 million contracts are written by experienced Contracts Lawyers and are intended to be understood only by other experienced lawyers. That’s the way the game works. External counsel cannot charge their clients $400 per man-hour for something that is easy, and scrubbing a $500 million contract is the exact opposite of ‘easy’. It is difficult beyond the comprehension of most people. ‘Scrubbing’ means to ensure that there is not as much as a single error in the text – anywhere. A $500 million contract is a web of hundreds or even thousands of cross-referenced Articles, Paragraphs, Subparagraphs, Clauses, and Subclauses – all tied together with extensive cross-referencing. Each cross-reference has to be meticulously checked to ensure that it is the correct article, paragraph, subparagraph, clause, or subclause, and most of them cross-reference another article, paragraph, subparagraph, clause, or subclause. The scrubber (legal reviewer) has to know exactly what each article, paragraph, subparagraph, clause, or subclause really means, and keep all of these things in his (or her) head while reviewing the text. After a couple of days, the number of things the scrubber has to simultaneously keep in his (or her) head exceeds 1,000. Then, it gets even more complicated. Errors are found, corrected, and notified to the other parties. These corrections can cause knock-on errors to things that were previously correct (and scrubbed), but are now longer correct because of the previous correction(s) made. The trickiest part is ‘omissions’. It’s much easier to spot an error in the text than it is to spot something that is missing but should be there. On and on it goes. I can continue with further detail, but you get the point.
There will be four independent teams of scrubbers for the Fox Sport/Big East TV Rights Contract – (1) Fox Sports internal lawyers, (2) Fox Sports external counsel, (3) Catholic 7 internal lawyers, and (4) Catholic 7 external counsel. The reason it is so important to have an error-free contract is that if something is incorrect or missing from the contract, and a situation or dispute occurs where that particular article, paragraph, subparagraph, clause, or subclause, it can end up in court, where such cases can be long and expensive to adjudicate. If there are a lot of errors in a contract, that can mean a lot of expensive court cases in the years to come – an avoidable big expense if the Contract is thoroughly scrubbed and error-free. That is a big advantage for both sides, and that is why both sides are willing to pay so much for external counsel to scrub the contract. Insurances are another minefield I won’t even comment on, other than to say it is also a lot more complicated than you might imagine.
Consider this: (20 Contract Law specialists)x($400/hour)x(40 hours/week)x(8 weeks) = $2,560,000 cost to each side for external counsel scrubbing. The cost of internal lawyers’ scrubbing to each side would be less than half of that, because it would be less thorough (fewer experienced lawyers available), and internal lawyers would be paid significantly less per hour than external counsel. But the internal cost could easily approach $1 million for each side.
Feb. 10, 2013 • Fox approached C7 while still in Big East. They have a greater need, so will pay more. Leagues only worth what someone will pay.
- Brett McMurphy, ESPN
February 10, 2013 • Did FOX Sports create the Catholic-7 split? – Brian Ewart, SB Nation/Villanova Basketball
ESPN's Brett McMurphy reports that the upstart cable sports network had been talking to the Catholic 7 schools since before they announced their separation from the football side of the Big East.
The Catholic 7 conference is searching for a new name, and while they would like to keep the Big East name, a more appropriate name might be the "FOX Sports Conference." According to ESPN's Brett McMurphy, FOX Sports "approached the C7 while still in the Big East," and it would seem that those conversations may have been the impetus for the new conference to form.
FOX has apparently pursued the Catholic 7 to provide college basketball inventory for their new FOX Sport 1 national cable sports network that should launch within the next year. They will fill their airwaves with live sports programming from other FOX partners, including a number of Major League Baseball teams that the broadcaster has partnered with on regional networks. College basketball offers a lot of programming during the baseball off-season.
Since they seemingly initiated the split, FOX is willing to pay up for the rights to broadcast the Catholic 7 (plus between three and five additional schools). The most recent ESPN report puts the FOX offer at between $30 and $40 million per year, depending on the final number of schools in the league. That would pay each Catholic 7 member between $3.00 million and $3.33 million per year — a significant raise over the $1.5 million or so that each school makes from the current Big East deal.
ESPN's sources believe that FOX is likely to land the Catholic 7's television rights based on these offers.
The move for FOX to instigate a split in the Big East conference is an interesting move. They obviously valued the college basketball inventory, but clearly did not value the football inventory offered by the unified Big East. FOX is already a partner in the Big Ten Network and in the Pac-12's new networks, and may be able to shift some of that power-conference football content to their new network at some point.
As good as Big Ten basketball has been, however, FOX may have been looking to add some established basketball brand names to their winter schedule, which would explain the interest in the Catholic 7, whose primary asset is name-brands in college basketball.
February 10, 2013 • Big East gets NBC offer – Brett McMurphy and Andy Katz, ESPN
NBC Sports Network verbally offered the Big East between $20 million and $23 million per year for six years to acquire the league's media rights, sources told ESPN. Meanwhile, the Big East's Catholic 7 schools are closing on a deal with Fox Sports, according to sources. NBC Sports Network is expected to submit an official offer to the Big East by next week.
The Catholic 7 schools -- DePaul, Georgetown, Marquette, Providence, St. John's, Seton Hall and Villanova -- haven't formed a new league yet, but Fox Sports has been the leader for their media rights, sources said. Fox Sports' offer would be worth between $30 million and $40 million per year depending on how many teams are in the league, sources said.
"Barring a hiccup," Fox Sports will land the media rights deal for the Catholic 7's new league, a source said.
Tuesday March 5, 2013 • Fox officially announces creation of 24-hour sports network, Fox Sports 1 - Hillary Busis, Entertainment Weekly
FS1 debuts on August 17th and features a schedule stocked with live events — including college basketball, college football, NASCAR, soccer, and UFC — as well as Fox Sports Live news coverage and original programs such as Rush Hour, a panel show hosted by Regis Philbin, and Fox Football Daily, an extension of Fox’s NFL Sunday pregame show hosted by personalities including Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long, Jay Glazer, Gus Johnson, Erin Andrews, and Mike Pereira.
Wednesday March 6, 2013 • Fox Sports 1 must succeed on its own terms before challenging ESPN - Steve Lepore, SB Nation
The story of Fox's flashy, but impressive, attempt to get into the cable sports business.
Friday March 8, 2013 • Big East Agrees to Sell Name to Breakaway Group of 7 - Richard Sandomir, The New York Times
On Friday, the Big East announced an agreement to sell its name to the seven Catholic universities that are breaking away this summer to form a basketball-only conference.
The new league will also assume the old one’s contract to play its conference tournament at Madison Square Garden.
The last tournament for the current version of the Big East will start on Tuesday.
The sale of the Big East name is not an exchange of cash. Instead, the so-called Catholic 7 will pay primarily by leaving behind much, if not all, of the money they would have received from the exit fees of other departing universities and the entry fees from new members, according to two people who have been briefed on the negotiations. The Catholic universities will not pay departure fees.
A recent report by CBSSports.com said the pool of revenue stood at $68.8 million, according to a document that detailed the terms of the Catholic 7’s separation from the Big East. The document contemplates letting the seven universities retain millions of dollars from their appearances in the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament because they are leaving as a group.
[SIDEBAR #4: Incentive or Leverage?]: Fox Sports ‘Best and Final offer’ included a $30 million incentive to the Big East to obtain the brand name, knowing that it was worth far more than $30 million. Note that the difference between $3,750,000 and $3,500,000 is $250,000 per school per year, and that ($250,000 per school per year)x(10 schools)x(12 years) = $30 million.
Friday March 8, 2013 • Big East, Catholic 7 confirm split is official - Daniel Uthman, USA TODAY
Wednesday March 13, 2013 • Butler, Dayton, Xavier to Join Big East Next Season - Lenn Robbins, New York Post
The Big East cleared its last hurdle Tuesday with the announcement it had reached an agreement with Notre Dame that allows the Irish to leave July 1 for the ACC. So where does the Big East and the yet-to-be named conference that will be anchored by Cincinnati and Connecticut go?
Dayton will join Butler and Xavier next season in the new Big East, which is said to be looking at corporate offices in the metropolitan area. Creighton and Saint Louis come on board for 2014-15.
Friday March 15, 2013 • The final scrubbing of the 2013 TV Rights Contract between Fox Sports the Big East Conference is completed. Dozens of copies of the 560-page contract are printed, with three copies dispatched by couriers to each of the ten university presidents for individual signings on Monday March 18th, which will be verified by live video links of the actual signings. In due course (over the next several months), every one of the first-run copies of the contract will bear all eleven signatures, with three copies permanently residing at each university.
Sunday March 17, 2013 • Record-Setting Nine Atlantic 10 Teams Earn Postseason Bids - Atlantic10.com
The Atlantic 10 placed a record nine teams in the postseason, including a record-tying five in the NCAA Tournament, three in the NIT and one in the College Basketball Invitational (CBI). Saint Louis (No. 4), VCU (No. 5), Butler (No. 6), Temple (No. 9) and La Salle (No. 13) all earned NCAA bids. It’s the third time the A-10 has received four at-large bids and placed five teams in the NCAA. Massachusetts (No. 2), Saint Joseph’s (No. 4) and Charlotte (No. 5) will all play in the NIT. Richmond will participate in the CBI.
Monday March 18, 2013 • The 2013 TV Rights Contract between Fox Sports and the Big East Conference is secretly signedby the CEO of Fox Sports and the ten presidents of the new Big East Conference institutions in advance of Tuesday’s announcement of same on Fox News’ 5:00 PM News Headlines.
Monday March 18, 2013 • 2013 Final AP Men's Basketball Poll – Associated Press
8. Georgetown • Big East • (25-6) • 1204 points
13. Saint Louis • Atlantic 10 • (27-6) • 810 points
15. Marquette • Big East • (23-8) • 646 points
22. Creighton • Missouri Valley • (27-7) • 215 points
Receiving votes: (#29) Butler • Atlantic 10 • (26-8) • 17 points
2012–13 Big East Conference Men's Basketball Season including Final Conference Standings and Postseason. - Wikipedia
2013 Big East Men's Basketball Tournament
Tuesday March 19 and Wednesday March 20, 2013 • The 2013 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament begins with four games at UD Arena in Dayton. The 68-team field includes #2 seed Georgetown (23–8), #3 Marquette (23–8), and #9 Villanova (20–13) as well as #6 Butler (Atlantic 10; 26–8) and #7 Creighton (Missouri Valley; 27–7).
Tuesday March 19, 2013 - 4:52 pm ET • Butler, Creighton, Xavier join new Big East – Fox Sports
March 20, 2013 • Big East adds Butler, Xavier and Creighton to Catholic 7, signs 12-year deal with Fox – Liz Clarke, The Washington Post
March 20, 2013 • Big East to add Butler, Creighton, Xavier in 2013 – SI.com Staff
March 20, 2013 • New Big East adds Butler, 2 others – Kieran Darcy, ESPN [”2 others” ??? Sour grapes, ESPN ???]
March 21, 2013 • New Big East, Fox Sports Formally Ink 12-Year, $500M Deal – Sports Business Journal
* * * * *
June 10, 2013 • Bleak ratings outlook for Big East and FOX Sports 1 - Andrei Greska, Paint Touches (Marquette basketball)
June 19, 2013 • Analysis of 2013 Big East TV Ratings - Andrei Greska, Paint Touches (Marquette basketball)
June 26, 2013 • Val Ackerman is named as the fifth Commissioner of the Big East Conference.
June 30, 2013 • Mike Aresco officially resigns as Commissioner of the Big East Conference.
July 1, 2013 • The split between the seven Catholic basketball schools and the football schools comes into legal effect.
July 1, 2013 • Mike Aresco becomes the first Commissioner of the new football-centric conference.
July 1, 2013 • Val Ackerman’s appointment as the fifth Commissioner of the Big East Conference comes into effect.
July 3, 2013 • Brad Stevens leaving Butler for NBA's Boston Celtics - Roger Kuznia, The Sporting News
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September 6, 2013 • Fox Sports 1 gambles with massive Big East basketball deal - Steve Lepore, SB Nation
Fox and CBS combine to throw more than 150 games on TV, but can a major college basketball conference work without ESPN?
Please recall my entry dated June 4, 2012 • On Monday morning, an executive at Fox Sports (who I’ll call ‘George Smiley’) sat in his office reading the latest article about mistrust and dissension within the Big East. He wondered out loud: ”What if we paid the Big East’s seven basketball schools to leave the Big East and start a new basketball-centric conference?”. The idea intrigued him …
November 8, 2013 • In the evening, George Smiley pours himself a cold beer, turns on the TV, and waits for tip-off at the Dunkin' Donuts Center with a big smile on his face.
November 8, 2013 • Providence Friars Open Regular Season With 82-78 Overtime Win Against Boston College – ProvidenceFriars.com
PROVIDENCE, R.I. - The Providence College men's basketball team defeated Boston College 82-78 in overtime in the first game of the 2013-14 regular season on Friday, November 8 at the Dunkin' Donuts Center. The contest also was the first hoops game televised by Fox Sports 1.
2013–14 Big East Conference Men's Basketball Season including Final Conference Standings and Postseason. - Wikipedia
2014 Big East Men's Basketball Tournament - Wikipedia
March 17, 2014 • TV Ratings: Big East Championship Down 80% on FS1 - SportsMediaWatch
Big East Champ. Down 80%, But Sets FS1 Record
The Providence/Creighton Big East Championship Game earned 702,000 viewers on Fox Sports 1 Saturday night, down 80% from Louisville/Syracuse on ESPN last year (3.4M), and down 68% from Louisville/Cincinnati in 2012 (2.2M). Despite the huge declines, the game ranks as the most-viewed college basketball telecast ever on Fox Sports 1 (dates back to November). (Fox Sports)
N.C. State/Xavier Earns Best “First Four” Overnight
Tuesday’s NCAA Tournament First Four doubleheader averaged a 0.9 overnight rating on TruTV, up 13% from last year, and even with 2012. The N.C. State/Xavier game earned a 1.2 overnight, the highest ever for a First Four game (dates back to 2011). (Turner Sports)
April 8, 2014 • Big East, FOX Sports 1 ratings pick up steam in March - Andrei Greska, Paint Touches (Marquette basketball)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------One of the biggest questions going into the inaugural season of the reconstituted Big East was how would the move to FOX Sports 1 would affect ratings. I speculated around this time last year that FOX had vastly overpaid for the Big East as it wasn’t much of a ratings boon on an individual or group level. A cluster of private institutions with relatively small enrolments simply doesn’t have as big a base as a behemoth Land Grant U.
With one season under the belt, how did those ratings turn out? Short answer. They were awful.
As a whole, FS1 averaged 108,535 viewers and a 0.07 rating in the 155 games it broadcast. In comparison ESPN, the competitor FS1 aims to beat, averaged 1,431,634 viewers and a 0.95 rating. To put that into further perspective, the least watched game on ESPN this season would have been the fourth-most watched game on FS1, drawing 410,000 viewers and a o.3 rating. Marquette was the featured team in that game.
But realistically, absolutely no one in their right mind would put the Worldwide Leader, a 30-year-old established brand with more klout and influence than any sports channel ever created, as a measuring stick for a network in the infancy of its infancy. Instead, what was truly in question was how it might compare to ESPN2, ESPNU and NBCSports, peers that FS1 might be able to rival in a short amount of time.
Channel • Viewers • Ratings
ESPN2 • 417,194 • 0.28
ESPNU • 140,088 • 0.09
NBCSN • 84,233 • 0.04
FS1 • 108,535 • 0.07
Here’s a useful graph to make it easier to compare:
February 8, 2015 • Big East basketball not scoring for Fox/Fox Sports 1 - Ken Fang, AwfulAnnouncing
So far, the numbers show that the Big East has to catch on with viewers.
Two Big East games on Fox proper (Providence-St. John’s in late January and Northwestern-Butler in December) have drawn fewer than 400,000 viewers, the lowest audiences ever for college basketball on broadcast television.
As for Fox Sports 1, the Big East isn’t attracting eyeballs either. While some games are seeing audiences over 100,000 and 200,000 viewers, ESPN has seen two of its games top over 3 million viewers and others over 2.5 million. Fox Sports 1 had games like Marquette-St. John’s draw about 107,000 viewers and 82,000 for DePaul-Seton Hall.
In addition, Fox Sports 1 had games like St. John’s Providence last month average 48,000 viewers, DePaul-Creighton early in January garner an average of 77,000 and a Creighton-Georgetown game just after the New Year had 58,000 viewers.
In 2013, Fox and the Big East signed a 12-year $500 million contract hoping the conference would be tentpole programming. Last season, the Big East on Fox Sports 1 averaged only 95,000 viewers. Fox is hoping it will do better numbers this season, but with small audiences, the Big East does not appear to be the draw that it used to be, at least at this point of its contract with Fox.
2014–15 Big East Conference Men's Basketball Season including Final Conference Standings and Postseason. - Wikipedia
2015 Big East Men's Basketball Tournament - Wikipedia
March 23, 2015 • Negative trends for FOX Sports 1, Big East in 2015 - Andrei Greska, Paint Touches (Marquette basketball)
There were plenty of theories about what caused the poor Big East ratings on FOX Sports 1 in 2014. Among the most prominent were: No one knows where to find the channel. It takes time to build a loyal base. The product wasn’t great.
The results for 2015 are in, and the prognosis isn’t any more positive. Big East basketball on FOX Sports 1 is not a big draw in terms of eyeballs. Big East games averaged 104,516 viewers in 2014 while dropping to 100,439 in 2015. I’m not here to discuss reasons, or excuses or potential fixes, that can all come at a later date. I am just reporting the 2015 numbers compared to the 2014 numbers, as amassed by a spreadsheet.
Here are the monthly averages:
Nov • Dec • Jan • Feb • Mar
2014 • 59,688 • 66,811 • 105,391 • 126,346 • 189,222
2015 • 45,571 • 86,250 • 112,966 • 105,353 • 152,133
If trend lines are more your thing, here’s that as well:
March 26, 2015 • TV ratings for Big East Tourney fall - Joe Pollicino, The Georgetown Voice
June 2, 2015 • UD Basketball Again Delivers Strong Television Ratings – Dayton Flyers.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The University of Dayton basketball programs continue to deliver high performance both on and off the court. Led by WHIO's leading coverage of the 2014-15 college basketball season, the UD men's basketball team drew strong local television and radio ratings throughout the season. On average, 30,000 households watched each of the games telecast on WHIO-TV. That equates to an average 6.4 household rating, led by the Atlantic 10 final vs VCU which drew an average 10.5 rating and a 20 share locally.
This year's ratings followed a strong finish to the 2013-14 season. The Sweet 16 game against Stanford, which also aired on WHIO-TV, averaged a 34.2 household rating and 40 share—and was viewed by approximately 164,000 households in the Dayton market. "We've enjoyed a great partnership with the University of Dayton for decades and it's rewarding to deliver some of the strongest college basketball ratings in the country. Dayton fans are very special," said Fantine Kerckaert, Senior Director of Customer Insights & TV Programming at Cox Media Group Ohio.
February, 2016 • Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman said: "The Big East was currently not in the market for more programs", and that if it was, geography would play a decisive role in determining any addition of members.
March 9, 2016 • Dayton Moves up to Sixth Among Top College Basketball TV Markets – Dayton Flyers.com
According to research analyzed by ESPN, Dayton's 1.7 market share was only behind Louisville (4.8), Raleigh-Durham (2.7), Kansas City (2.5), Greensboro-High Point (2.5), and Cincinnati (1.8). All 30 University of Dayton men's basketball games were televised in 2015-16, including a school-record 21 contests nationally. Eight of those national games were shown on the ESPN family of networks
ESPN has compiled the television data for 14 years and Dayton has always been one of the top 14 markets.
2015–16 Big East Conference Men's Basketball Season including Final Conference Standings and Postseason. - Wikipedia
2016 Big East Men's Basketball Tournament – Wikipedia
April 4, 2016 • CHAMPS! Jenkins' buzzer-beater delivers championship for Nova – Villanova University
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November 2, 2016 • Best Traveling Fans | High Five – NCAA.com Video (2 min. 20 sec.)
High Five counts down the top traveling fan bases in college sports. See which fans are willing to go the extra mile to see their team in action.
5. Notre Dame football fans
4 Arizona Wildcats football fans
3. Nebraska Cornhuskers football fans
2. University of North Dakota ice hockey fans
1. Dayton Flyers basketball fans
At 1:45 on the video: “And at Number 1 they’re called the Flyers for a reason. University of Dayton basketball fans will travel far and wide to support their team. With just over 8,000 undergraduates, Dayton fans are known for their large turnouts at holiday invitations, EASILY outnumbering every other participating fanbase. This, and their large turnouts at March Madness, has the Flyers flying to the top of our list.”
November 3, 2016 • NCAA.com puts UD No. 1 for the Best Traveling Fans – University of Dayton
INDIANAPOLIS – With a passionate, knowledgeable and loyal fan base, the University of Dayton Flyer Faithful are known around the world for generating one of the best homecourt atmospheres in college basketball. Turns out the Flyer Faithful is pretty tough on the road too.
On Wednesday, Dayton was ranked No. 1 by NCAA.com's "High Five" for having the best traveling fan base in college sports.
2016–17 Big East Conference Men's Basketball Season including Final Conference Standings and Postseason. - Wikipedia
2017 Big East Men's Basketball Tournament - Wikipedia
March 23, 2017 • BIG EAST Enjoys Most-Watched Season on FOX Sports Family of Networks – FoxSports.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Overall Viewership Up +16% on FOX, FS1 and FS2
NEW YORK, NY – BIG EAST men’s basketball enjoyed its most watched season on the FOX broadcast network, FS1 and FS2 in 2016-17, with an overall viewership increase of +16% over last season and a huge +84% growth over the conference’s first season on FOX Sports in 2013-14.
BIG EAST men’s basketball games on FOX, FS1 and FS2 averaged 192,000 viewers per game during the 2016-17 regular season and conference tournament, compared to last year’s average of 166,000 (+16%) and the 2013-14 average of 104,000 (+84%). This season, BIG EAST regular-season games averaged 182,000 viewers per game, up +18% over last year (154,000) and up a staggering +96% over 2013-14 (93,000).
On FS1 alone, BIG EAST men’s basketball viewership grew +20% from last year’s regular season (130,000 vs. 108,000 in 2015-16) and +11% during the tournament (212,000 vs. 191,000 in 2015-16). On FOX Sports GO, BIG EAST Tournament games were streamed for more than 4.4 million minutes, a +130% increase from a year ago.
2017–18 Big East Conference Men's Basketball Season including Final Conference Standings and Postseason. - Wikipedia
2018 Big East Men's Basketball Tournament - Wikipedia
March 21, 2018 • FOX Sports Nets Most-Watched College Basketball Season Ever – FoxSports.com
Overall Viewership Up +27% on FOX and FS1
NEW YORK, NY – FOX Sports enjoyed its most-watched season of college basketball during the 2017-18 season, with a huge combined year-over-year increase on the FOX broadcast network and FS1. Men’s basketball games on FOX and FS1 averaged 262,000 viewers per game during the entire 2017-18 season, a +27% jump over the 2016-17 average of 206,000, according to Nielsen Media Research.
FOX College Hoops set records during conference championship week, as the 2018 BIG EAST Tournament was the network’s most-watched conference tournament in history. The event averaged 379,000 viewers over nine games on FOX and FS1, including 1,491,000 for Villanova’s overtime championship victory against Providence, which stands as the BIG EAST’s most-watched championship game on FOX.
April 2, 2018 • Champions Again! Wildcats Top Michigan, 79-62 – Villanova University
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2018–19 Big East Conference Men's Basketball Season including Final Conference Standings and Postseason. - Wikipedia
2019 Big East Men's Basketball Tournament - Wikipedia
March 12, 2019 • FOX Sports Nets Most-Watched College Hoops Regular Season Ever – FoxSports.com
FOX Sports Nets Most-Watched College Hoops Regular Season Ever
Regular-season men’s college basketball viewership on FOX and FS1 is up a combined +12% year-over-year, giving the network its most-watched college hoops season to-date. Regular-season college basketball viewership on FOX and FS1 has grown each of the last five years.
June 26, 2019 • UConn leaving AAC after accepting invitation to join Big East Conference - Matt Norlander, CBS Sports
UConn and the Big East are officially linked again as the Huskies will join the conference in the summer of 2020.
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2019–20 Big East Conference Men's Basketball Season including Final Conference Standings and Postseason. - Wikipedia
2020 Big East Men's Basketball Tournament – Wikipedia
March 15, 2020 • SPORTSLINE 2020 NCAA TOURNAMENT SIMULATION: DAYTON'S ROAD TO THE CHAMPIONSHIP - Matt Severance, SportsLine.com
March 15, 2020 • Simulation Sunday: How Dayton won the 2020 NCAA Tournament in SportsLine's projections - Kyle Boone, CBS Sports
April 6, 2020 • NCAA Tournament simulation: Dayton wins first title as SportsLine simulates entire Big Dance - David Cobb, CBS Sports
June 30, 2020 • How UConn ended up back in the Big East - Daniel Connolly and Dan Madigan, SB Nation/UConn
July 1, 2020 • UConn officially rejoins Big East after seven-year absence - Jeff Borzello, ESPN [As per the Big East’s original 2013 TV Rights contract with Fox Sports, UConn is now on the Big East payroll, receiving $3,750,000 each year until the expiry of the contract in 2025.]
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October 14, 2020 • First Four Remains In Dayton Through 2026 – University of Dayton
University of Dayton Arena has hosted more NCAA men's Division I basketball tournament games - 125 - than any other venue in the nation. UD Arena has hosted the NCAA tournament in 33 of the 51 seasons since the Arena opened in 1969. March Madness has opened in Dayton every year since 2001 - from 2001-10 as the Opening Round and from 2011-19 as the First Four.
January 26, 2021 • Big East commissioner Val Ackerman signs 3-year extension to June 2024 – Associated Press / ESPN
2020–21 Big East Conference Men's Basketball Season including Final Conference Standings and Postseason. - Wikipedia
2021 Big East Men's Basketball Tournament – Wikipedia
March, 2021 • Fewer viewers for Selection Show, conference title games - SportsMediaWatch
College basketball’s conference championship weekend returned to fewer viewers.
As for the conference tournaments, the Big Ten fared better than the rest — both in raw numbers and compared to 2019. Sunday’s Illinois-Ohio State Big Ten Tournament final finished as the top game of the college basketball season with a 2.2 rating and 3.68 million viewers on CBS, down just 8% and 7% respectively from 2019 (Michigan-Michigan State: 2.4, 3.94M).
Steep declines and multi-year lows marked the rest of the weekend slate. Saturday’s Georgia Tech-Florida State ACC Tournament final drew a 1.0 rating and 1.80 million viewers on ESPN, the lowest for the game since 2010 (0.9, 1.30 million).
Saturday’s Texas-Oklahoma State Big 12 Tournament final drew a 0.9 rating and 1.65 million viewers on ESPN, the lowest for that game in at least 14 years and down 41% and 34% respectively from 2019 (Iowa State-Kansas: 1.6, 2.52M).
Sunday’s Alabama-LSU SEC Tournament final had a 1.0 rating and 1.60 million viewers on ESPN, the lowest for that game in at least 12 years and down 33% and 28% respectively from 2019 (Auburn-Tennessee: 1.45, 2.24M).
The Oregon State-Colorado Pac-12 Tournament final avoided a multi-season low, but its 0.6 rating and 1.16 million viewers on ESPN sank 52% and 42% respectively from 2019 (Oregon-Washington: 1.2, 1.99M).
The St. Bonaventure-VCU Atlantic-10 Tournament final had a 0.7 rating (-23%) and 1.06 million viewers (-17%) on CBS.
Georgetown’s upset run could not save the Big East Tournament final, as the Hoyas’ rout of Creighton (0.54 rating and 903,000 viewers) was the lowest rated and least-watched edition of the game since 2015 on FS1 (0.2, 414K) and declined (-23% and -20% respectively) from 2019.
The Houston-Cincinnati American Athletic Conference Tournament final had a 0.51 rating (-32%) and 893,000 viewers (-25%) on ESPN.
April, 2021 • NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Championship game viewers from 2013 to 2021 - Statista.com
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Last edited by Fieldhouse Flyer on Fri Sep 10, 2021 12:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Fieldhouse Flyer - Posts: 1389
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Re: History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Con
by Fieldhouse Flyer » Sat Sep 04, 2021 7:13 am
Post #3
History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts
Post #1: History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: May 31, 1979 - December 10, 2012
Post #2: History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: December 11, 2012 – September 4, 2021
Post #3: Present and Future TV Rights Contracts
Post #4: Information about the Big East Universities and Most Likely Expansion Candidates
Post #6: Why Xavier, Butler, and Creighton were chosen over Dayton, Saint Louis, and VCU
Post #7: Fieldhouse Flyer’s "You heard it here first" post - September 7, 2021
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Present and Future TV Rights Contracts
Power Five conference revenues slowed by COVID-19 pandemic, tax records show – USA Today – May 20, 2021
Big East 2018-19 Basketball Revenue - GoldenWarrior11, HLOH thread - March 31, 2020
History of Men's College Basketball on Television – Wikipedia
List of ESPN Sports Properties – Wikipedia
List of Fox Sports Properties – Wikipedia
Ever since 2010 – or perhaps even earlier – Fox Sports has made a deliberate and visible effort to diversify their Sports Properties portfolio. This includes, among other things, investing their money in minority holdings of Sports Properties of Fox Sports’ primary competitors (ESPN, ABC, CBS, NBC, etc.), and have been doing so at an increasing rate in recent years. With the August 24, 2021 announcement that the Big Ten, ACC, and Pac-12 intend to form a scheduling alliance to counter the expanding SEC, investing in the Power 4 conference TV Rights instantly became less risky, while investing in the Big 12 and Big East instantly became more risky. This was a deliberate and foreseeable strategic consequence of the announcement by the Big Ten, ACC, and Pac-12. Looking ahead:
Sports Media Rights: Current TV Deals and What’s on the Horizon - John Cassillo, TV Revolution.com - February 18, 2021
In 2013, when Xavier and Butler announced their departures from the Atlantic 10 for greener pastures, it spooked the A10 head office and many of the remaining A10 basketball programs. The presidents of Dayton, Saint Louis, Virginia Commonwealth - and possibly others - took advantage of this jitteriness, and demanded a renegotiation of their contracts with the Atlantic 10, ”or else we may have to consider our options.” The A10 panicked, and agreed to give these three schools what they wanted, in a vote that was passed by the A10’s member institutions (who didn’t want any more key schools leaving the conference). What Dayton, Saint Louis, and Virginia Commonwealth got was the following: (1) instead of sharing NCAA Tournament Units equally among conference members, these three school would get ‘a larger-than-pro-rata share of the revenue streams generated from their future NCAA Tournament Units, and (2) Dayton, Saint Louis, and Virginia Commonwealth would be permitted to negotiate their own TV Rights contracts – independent of the A10 – with ESPN having the option to televise any games that were not sold to others. Dayton, Saint Louis, and Virginia Commonwealth could sell the rights to individual games, groups of games, or their entire basketball schedule if they chose.
Billikens Tab Learfield Sports as Multimedia Rights Partner – Learfield, July 16, 2015
Dayton and Virginia Commonwealth did not make public announcements about their TV Rights Contracts.
ESPN and ESPN+ Extend Relationship with Atlantic 10 Conference – Anna Negron, ESPN - November 18, 2020
Where Basketball Is Football: Schools like Dayton and VCU Face Hoops Dependence – Emily Caron, Sportico - November 25, 2020
Conference Realignment: What Next? – Page 35
Excellent post, Violet Ram.
======================================================================================================================================
History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts
Post #1: History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: May 31, 1979 - December 10, 2012
Post #2: History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: December 11, 2012 – September 4, 2021
Post #3: Present and Future TV Rights Contracts
Post #4: Information about the Big East Universities and Most Likely Expansion Candidates
Post #6: Why Xavier, Butler, and Creighton were chosen over Dayton, Saint Louis, and VCU
Post #7: Fieldhouse Flyer’s "You heard it here first" post - September 7, 2021
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Present and Future TV Rights Contracts
Power Five conference revenues slowed by COVID-19 pandemic, tax records show – USA Today – May 20, 2021
……… ► Big East TV Rights Contract • $3,750,000 to each Big East school per year.Approximate Payouts per School: Power Five Conference Schools in 2020
Conference • Total per School • 80% to Football • 20% to Basketball/b]
► [b]Big Ten • $54,300,000 • $43,440,000 • $10,860,000
► SEC • $45,500,000 • $36,400,000 • $9,100,000
► Big 12 • $39,000,000 • ]$31,200,000 • $7,800,000
► Pac-12 • $35,000,000 • $28,000,000 • $7,000,000
► ACC • $35,000,000 • $28,000,000 • $7,000,000 (plus $10,800,000 per year to Notre Dame basketball).
Big East 2018-19 Basketball Revenue - GoldenWarrior11, HLOH thread - March 31, 2020
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Survey Year • Institution Name • Revenue from Men's Basketball
2018 • Marquette University • $21,856,683
2018 • University of Dayton • $16,281,364
2018 • Villanova University • $14,428,932
2018 • Xavier University • $13,916,975
2018 • Georgetown University • $13,573,946
2018 • Providence College • $11,117,186
2018 • St. John's University • $10,028,677
2018 • University of Connecticut • $9,325,922
2018 • Creighton University • $8,590,055
2018 • Butler University • $8,228,482
2018 • Seton Hall University • $7,506,127
2018 • DePaul University • $6,793,520
History of Men's College Basketball on Television – Wikipedia
List of ESPN Sports Properties – Wikipedia
List of Fox Sports Properties – Wikipedia
Ever since 2010 – or perhaps even earlier – Fox Sports has made a deliberate and visible effort to diversify their Sports Properties portfolio. This includes, among other things, investing their money in minority holdings of Sports Properties of Fox Sports’ primary competitors (ESPN, ABC, CBS, NBC, etc.), and have been doing so at an increasing rate in recent years. With the August 24, 2021 announcement that the Big Ten, ACC, and Pac-12 intend to form a scheduling alliance to counter the expanding SEC, investing in the Power 4 conference TV Rights instantly became less risky, while investing in the Big 12 and Big East instantly became more risky. This was a deliberate and foreseeable strategic consequence of the announcement by the Big Ten, ACC, and Pac-12. Looking ahead:
Sports Media Rights: Current TV Deals and What’s on the Horizon - John Cassillo, TV Revolution.com - February 18, 2021
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Going year by year, a quick breakdown on what’s due for a new contract and who could be involved.
2021
• ESPN’s portion ($700 million annually) of MLB deal expires
• NHL exclusivity with NBC expires
2022
• All NFL media rights deals expire
• MLS deals expire
• Premier League deal expires
2023
• SEC deal with CBS expires (already picked up by ESPN)
Nothing to see here. By housing everything SEC on ESPN networks now, ESPN gains an even stronger foothold in college football season than it already had. And the SEC makes boatloads more money.
2024
• NASCAR deals expire
• NCAA (non-CFP or March Madness) exclusivity with ESPN expires
• College Football Playoff exclusivity with ESPN expires
• Big Ten deals expire
• Pac-12 deal expires
This is where the ground can shift for both networks and leagues.
Split between ESPN and FOX for $440 million per year, Big Ten rights are already incredibly high as it is, but FOX seems like the preferred partner in recent years and has a stake in the Big Ten Network. Assuming the Big Ten Network isn’t dropped from basic packages (could definitely happen), the conference will be in an advantageous position to ask FOX and/or ESPN for another high number. Another option: CBS grabs afternoon rights to the Big Ten (and some basketball inventory) to replace the SEC deal. OR NBC could jump in if Notre Dame opts to put football under the ESPN umbrella with the rest of its sports.
2025
NBA/WNBA deals expire
Notre Dame exclusivity with NBC expires
Big 12 deals expire
• Big East deals expire
Given that it’s basketball-specific, don’t expect a major uptick for Big East rights — especially if FOX has been laying out more money for Big Ten and/or Pac-12 games. The main draw for the Big East is Villanova, at the moment, after the Wildcats won two of the last four national titles (2016, 2018) and their continued presence near the top of the sport should lift all boats in the league. In an ideal world for the Big East, it’s not buried on FS1 so much. But no other network beyond ESPN (its long-time partner before 2013) could really offer better exposure.[/b]
In 2013, when Xavier and Butler announced their departures from the Atlantic 10 for greener pastures, it spooked the A10 head office and many of the remaining A10 basketball programs. The presidents of Dayton, Saint Louis, Virginia Commonwealth - and possibly others - took advantage of this jitteriness, and demanded a renegotiation of their contracts with the Atlantic 10, ”or else we may have to consider our options.” The A10 panicked, and agreed to give these three schools what they wanted, in a vote that was passed by the A10’s member institutions (who didn’t want any more key schools leaving the conference). What Dayton, Saint Louis, and Virginia Commonwealth got was the following: (1) instead of sharing NCAA Tournament Units equally among conference members, these three school would get ‘a larger-than-pro-rata share of the revenue streams generated from their future NCAA Tournament Units, and (2) Dayton, Saint Louis, and Virginia Commonwealth would be permitted to negotiate their own TV Rights contracts – independent of the A10 – with ESPN having the option to televise any games that were not sold to others. Dayton, Saint Louis, and Virginia Commonwealth could sell the rights to individual games, groups of games, or their entire basketball schedule if they chose.
Billikens Tab Learfield Sports as Multimedia Rights Partner – Learfield, July 16, 2015
ST. LOUIS - Saint Louis University Director of Athletics Chris May and Learfield Sports President and CEO Greg Brown today announced a multimedia rights partnership through 2020.
It is the first time in school history that SLU is outsourcing its comprehensive athletics rights. The agreement includes the establishment of Billiken Sports Properties, which is led by General Manager John Sartorius. The rights affiliation also will be leveraged with Learfield Licensing Partners, a Learfield Sports company that represents SLU’s domestic licensing program.
“Clearly, this is an important step for our program, and we could not be happier to be aligned with Learfield Sports,” May said. “Learfield is a true leader in the industry and is highly regarded throughout the collegiate sports community with a strong local, regional and national presence. We look forward to teaming with Learfield to grow the Billiken athletic brand both in the corporate world and in merchandising. ”
Billiken Sports Properties will manage the comprehensive SLU athletics rights relationships including signage, sponsorships, corporate hospitality, event marketing, radio play-by-play and coaches’ shows, television and official athletic sponsorships on http://www.SLUBillikens.com. Learfield’s rights also include third-tier television rights for SLU men’s basketball games at Chaifetz Arena.
Dayton and Virginia Commonwealth did not make public announcements about their TV Rights Contracts.
ESPN and ESPN+ Extend Relationship with Atlantic 10 Conference – Anna Negron, ESPN - November 18, 2020
The Atlantic 10 Conference has secured a three-year extension to its relationship with ESPN and ESPN+ for a selection of the league’s television and streaming rights. The agreement, which was announced Wednesday, maintains the league’s TV coverage on the leading sports media platform through 2023-24.
The extension maintains the coverage of 28 men’s basketball appearances on ESPN, four regular season women’s basketball appearances and the women’s basketball championship, which it has carried for the previous 23 years. For the last five years, ESPN’s coverage of Atlantic 10 men’s basketball has featured the A-10 ESPN Friday Night Showcase, which highlights a key conference matchup as the spotlight game in college basketball during Fridays in January, February and March.
“ESPN has been an outstanding partner for a very long time for the Atlantic 10,” stated A-10 Commissioner Bernadette V. McGlade. “Between the popular A-10 ESPN Friday Night Showcase and nearly a quarter century of women’s basketball coverage, this is a relationship that has been fruitful for both ESPN and the A-10, and continuing the partnership was an easy decision.”
ESPN also retains the rights the A-10 Men’s Basketball Championship final, which ESPN has sublicensed to CBS Network Television since 2010.
The extension keeps the Atlantic 10, which is celebrating its 45th Anniversary in 2020-21, among the top basketball conferences in television coverage. The A-10 has boasted 65 postseason appearances in the last decade, 35 of which have been bids to the NCAA Tournament. The conference earned multiple at-large bids to 13 of the last 14 NCAA Tournaments. Over the past six years, every A-10 member has made at least one postseason appearance. League member Dayton had a magical season last year, reaching a No. 3 ranking in the AP and Coaches’ Polls. The Flyers, behind National Player of the Year Obi Toppin and National Coach of the Year Anthony Grant, were being forecasted as a Final Four team in media predictions before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the postseason.
Where Basketball Is Football: Schools like Dayton and VCU Face Hoops Dependence – Emily Caron, Sportico - November 25, 2020
The University of Dayton's athletic department is more dependent on men's basketball revenues than just about any other school in the country.
At Dayton, the financial pain was particularly ill-timed. Before the pandemic, the Flyers were looking at a potential No. 1 seed and a deep run in the NCAA tournament. None of that materialized, and it’s not clear how much, if any, budgetary ground the program will make up as the new season dawns.
“If you were to take our operating revenue—scholarships [aside] because of the nuance in how people count them - 70% of our budget is reliant on men’s basketball,” Dayton AD Neil Sullivan said in an interview. “If you were to take our commercially generated revenue—ticket sales, corporate partnerships, radio, television, et cetera—that number creeps up into the 90% range. We’re in the 99th percentile of reliance on basketball in Division I. There may be no school more reliant on basketball than UD.”
Some $16.3 million of the Flyers’ $35 million in earnings in 2019, or 46%, came from the court—the same proportion of revenue that football brings to Texas A&M. Dayton’s FCS football team, meanwhile, brought in just under $160,000 in revenue, less than 1% of basketball’s total, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s Equity in Athletics data.
The vast majority of Dayton’s commercially generated basketball revenue is tied to tickets at the 8,000-student Ohio school; the $11.5 million in ticket-related revenues comprises one-third of the total athletics earnings. Basketball has been good to Dayton, because the Flyers attract fans. Dayton’s 13,407-capacity arena, in the final phase of a $75 million renovation, averaged just under full capacity last season. It has been in the NCAA’s Top 35 in attendance for the last 50 years.
The Flyers also stay within their means; with just $7.4 million in expenses, the men’s basketball team costs less than half of what it generated for the school in 2019.
Dayton also operates its own concessions (which Sullivan says generate more than $2 million annually), sells its own corporate partnerships, and brings in substantial philanthropic support, much of which Sullivan attributes to basketball even if it isn’t listed directly as such in the data. Another $100,000 annually comes from hosting March Madness’s First Four play-in round (not counted in financial reports as basketball revenue), which the school has done every year since the tournament expanded to 68 teams and added the preliminary round in 2011. That didn’t happen in 2020, and again won’t in 2021 with the NCAA now planning for a single-site tournament.
Though Dayton managed a 99% renewal rate of its originally planned seat contribution gifts for this year, required as part of season ticket purchasing for seats in the lower level of the arena, that $4.5 million still leaves the school far short of typical ticket-related revenues. As the 2020-21 basketball season tips off, the impact of losing much of that isn’t lost on the Flyers, or any of the other basketball-dependent institutions.
“We have to do what any business does when there’s pressure on revenue, or dramatic decreases on revenue: adjust on the expense side,” Sullivan said. “We’ve done that. Year to date, we’re probably trending around 60% of expenses compared to where we were. We’ll feel that.” The hope is that it won’t last past this year. “If it can be a season,” he said, “we’ll come out on the other side.”
VCU athletic director Ed McLaughlin shares a similar mentality, acutely aware of his own department’s deep basketball dependence.
Hoops money accounted for a quarter of VCU’s athletics budget in 2019, according to the school’s NCAA financial report. The Rams sit just behind the Flyers in terms of average men’s basketball attendance within the Atlantic 10 Conference, with nearly all of their $2.6 million in departmental ticket sales coming from basketball.
Basketball brings in $4.25 of the department’s $4.7 million in donated dollars, and 73% of licensing and other corporate dollars.
VCU is one of the few basketball-only powerhouses that’s a public university. Its NCAA filings show that while basketball only accounts for about one-fourth of the total athletic department revenue, it makes up just under 63% of the athletic department’s total earned revenue. The Rams are heavily funded by student fees—to the tune of $21 million. Outside of those revenues, the Richmond-based institution’s athletic department earned around $14 million during FY19.
McLaughlin added that “probably 98%” of the school’s conference payout—a combination of its NCAA earnings and media rights money—also comes from the sport.
“At the Power Five level, a lot of schools have two sports to generate a whole bunch of revenue, and they have large TV contracts,” McLaughlin said in an interview. “We are dependent on basketball to make us that money. Whether it’s us or Dayton, Wichita State or any of the schools like us, we are certainly dependent on the one sport.”
A handful of Power Five institutions thread a close needle between football and basketball—Kentucky nears a 50/50 split at nearly $41.4 million in revenues from the former to $38.8 million from the latter, while Kansas, UNC and Louisville see similar patterns. But it’s at the Daytons and VCUs, which operate without substantial (if any) football support, where the dependence is clear.
Of non-FBS institutions, Dayton brings in the second-most money from basketball behind Marquette. The Golden Eagles made $21.8 million in hoops revenue last fiscal year, according to EADA data, good for 56% of their total revenues. Just behind the Flyers is Gonzaga at $16.2 million (45%). A chunk of Big East heavyweights follow, with VCU falling lower down the list.
Dayton puts its hit from the cancellation of March Madness and reduced conference distributions at seven figures, while VCU puts its own around “a couple hundred thousand.” As McLaughlin explained it, the A10 splits its NCAA earnings among member institutions on both an equity and performance basis, with higher earners like Dayton and VCU taking home a bigger percentage of the total thanks to the “units” they earned for the conference through NCAA tournament bids and wins.
The Flyers were heading into postseason play undefeated in conference contests and at 29–2 overall, and a deep run could’ve meant substantial March Madness earnings for the conference, which are paid out over a six-year span.
Dayton made the Elite Eight in 2014, meaning that 2020 would’ve marked the final year of its six-year payout from that run. With NCAA distributions slashed across the board by almost two-thirds and nothing new coming down the line from this year, Sullivan calls it a “double hit,” one that reverberates throughout the whole conference, with all basketball-playing institutions in line for a piece of the earnings - fellow powerhouse VCU included.
As the 2021 season begins, both schools are prepared to make do this season, but basketball losses beyond that could be a devastating blow for the Daytons and VCUs of the college sports world.
Conference Realignment: What Next? – Page 35
On Friday September 3, 2021, Violet Ram wrote:
Long time lurker, first time poster. Also, full disclosure, I'm a VCU fan but I'm not here to rep or push my school. I'm curious about what it means for a school to add value and the posts like the two below:
In regards to TV payout, it's important to consider what the Big East's contract represents. Not to pick on DePaul, but I doubt Fox values all of DePaul's games as much as Villanova's. For the sake of argument, wouldn't a school only have to add more value than the median Big East school to increase the TV contract per school payout? The value of the the league's contract is tied to how many eyeballs a team can attract. Yes, being a consistently dominant team like Gonzaga adds public interest and thus eyeballs, but so does having large and passionate fanbases. Texas wouldn't be going to the SEC if it was based on success. I haven't found robust data on regular season games, but for example, the A10's championship has consistently drawn more viewers than the Big East championship but for 2018. From looking at some random weeks on showbuzzdaily, it appears that the top A10 teams draw about the same as BE games (again, not scientific because it's hard to find and cull more data). Having games on FS1 may hurt the Big East's viewership numbers, but it seems like good schools would bring additional viewers to FS1. If anyone has more robust TV data and wouldn't mind sharing, I'm very interested (and one of the primary reasons I signed-up to post).
In terms of NCAA units, I feel like adding good schools--but below Gonzaga quality--would still add considerable amount of units to the conference. What's important for maximizing a conference's bids isn't who is at the top of the conference standings, but rather, how well did the conference perform in OOC. Adding schools that go out and consistently perform well in OOC helps raise the conference's NET. It also means there's more good teams to absorb losses in conference, thus creatings more teams with good profiles which leads to more bids. And one of the added bonuses of more teams in the NCAA is that a conference may see it's teams bumped into easier matchups as to avoid putting two teams from the same conference in the same regional games.
To be frank, I think the biggest difference between the A10 and the Big East isn't the top of the league, but rather the bottom of the league. Beating a down Butler carries significantly more cache than playing Fordham or La Salle. Even if the Big East added Dayton, SLU, or anyone else a and they consistently finished near the bottom of the league, as long as they went out and performed well in OOC, the conference would be gaining NCAA bids.
Excellent post, Violet Ram.
======================================================================================================================================
Last edited by Fieldhouse Flyer on Fri Sep 10, 2021 12:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Fieldhouse Flyer - Posts: 1389
- Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2014 5:11 am
Re: History of the Big East Conference and TV Rights Contrac
by Fieldhouse Flyer » Sat Sep 04, 2021 7:15 am
Post #4
History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts
Post #1: History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: May 31, 1979 - December 10, 2012
Post #2: History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: December 11, 2012 – September 4, 2021
Post #3: Present and Future TV Rights Contracts
Post #4: Information about the Big East Universities and Most Likely Expansion Candidates
Post #5: Rankings for Men’s Basketball Expenses
Post #6: Why Xavier, Butler, and Creighton were chosen over Dayton, Saint Louis, and VCU
Post #7: Fieldhouse Flyer’s "You heard it here first" post - September 7, 2021
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Information about the Big East Universities and Most Likely Expansion Candidates
Founded • University Website • Wikipedia Link • Type • Motto
1789 • Georgetown University • Georgetown University • Jesuit • "Utraque Unum" • (Both into One)
1818 • Saint Louis University • Saint Louis University • Jesuit • "Ad maiorem Dei gloriam" • (For the greater glory of God)
1831 • Xavier University • Xavier University • Jesuit • "Vidit Mirabilia Magna" • (He has seen great wonders)
1838 • Virginia Commonwealth • Virginia Commonwealth • Public • "Make it Real"
1842 • Villanova University • Villanova University • Augustinian • "Veritas, Unitas, Caritas" • (Truth, Unity, Charity)
1850 • University of Dayton • University of Dayton • Marianist • "Pro Deo et Patria" • (For God and Country)
1855 • Butler University • Butler University • Private • "Education, Research, Service"
1856 • Seton Hall University • Seton Hall University • Diocesan • "Hazard Zet Forward" • (Despite hazards, move forward)
1870 • St. John's University • St. John's University • Vincentian • "Educatio Christiana Animae Perfectio" • (Christian education perfects the soul)
1878 • Creighton University • Creighton University • Jesuit • [No school motto]
1881 • Marquette University • Marquette University • Jesuit • "Numen Flumenque" • (God and the (Mississippi) River)
1881 • Univ. of Connecticut • Univ. of Connecticut • Public • [No school motto]
1898 • DePaul University • DePaul University • Vincentian • "Viam sapientiae monstrabo tibi" • (I will show you the way of wisdom)
1917 • Providence College • Providence College • Dominican • "Veritas" • (Truth)
All non-English mottos are in Latin, with the single exception of Seton Hall’s motto, which Wikipedia lists as (Norman French/English).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Related: Niche’s 2022 BEST CATHOLIC COLLEGES IN AMERICA Rankings – HLOH Post – August 14, 2021
Related: Endowments, Enrolments, and Sports Revenue – HLOH Thread – July 30, 2021
Related: The 1950s: The Golden Age of Catholic Basketball – HLOH Thread – August 2, 2020
Related: History of Conference Realignments 1955-1991 – HLOH Thread – August 10, 2021
Related: Big East Conference: May 31, 1979 - July 1, 2013 – Wikipedia
Related: Big East Conference: July 1, 2013 - Present – Wikipedia
Related: 2010–2013 Big East Conference Realignment – Wikipedia
======================================================================================================================================
History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts
Post #1: History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: May 31, 1979 - December 10, 2012
Post #2: History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: December 11, 2012 – September 4, 2021
Post #3: Present and Future TV Rights Contracts
Post #4: Information about the Big East Universities and Most Likely Expansion Candidates
Post #5: Rankings for Men’s Basketball Expenses
Post #6: Why Xavier, Butler, and Creighton were chosen over Dayton, Saint Louis, and VCU
Post #7: Fieldhouse Flyer’s "You heard it here first" post - September 7, 2021
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Information about the Big East Universities and Most Likely Expansion Candidates
Founded • University Website • Wikipedia Link • Type • Motto
1789 • Georgetown University • Georgetown University • Jesuit • "Utraque Unum" • (Both into One)
1818 • Saint Louis University • Saint Louis University • Jesuit • "Ad maiorem Dei gloriam" • (For the greater glory of God)
1831 • Xavier University • Xavier University • Jesuit • "Vidit Mirabilia Magna" • (He has seen great wonders)
1838 • Virginia Commonwealth • Virginia Commonwealth • Public • "Make it Real"
1842 • Villanova University • Villanova University • Augustinian • "Veritas, Unitas, Caritas" • (Truth, Unity, Charity)
1850 • University of Dayton • University of Dayton • Marianist • "Pro Deo et Patria" • (For God and Country)
1855 • Butler University • Butler University • Private • "Education, Research, Service"
1856 • Seton Hall University • Seton Hall University • Diocesan • "Hazard Zet Forward" • (Despite hazards, move forward)
1870 • St. John's University • St. John's University • Vincentian • "Educatio Christiana Animae Perfectio" • (Christian education perfects the soul)
1878 • Creighton University • Creighton University • Jesuit • [No school motto]
1881 • Marquette University • Marquette University • Jesuit • "Numen Flumenque" • (God and the (Mississippi) River)
1881 • Univ. of Connecticut • Univ. of Connecticut • Public • [No school motto]
1898 • DePaul University • DePaul University • Vincentian • "Viam sapientiae monstrabo tibi" • (I will show you the way of wisdom)
1917 • Providence College • Providence College • Dominican • "Veritas" • (Truth)
All non-English mottos are in Latin, with the single exception of Seton Hall’s motto, which Wikipedia lists as (Norman French/English).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Related: Niche’s 2022 BEST CATHOLIC COLLEGES IN AMERICA Rankings – HLOH Post – August 14, 2021
Rank. School • Overall Niche Grade • Acceptance Rate • Net Price • SAT Range
24. Georgetown University • Overall Niche Grade: A+ • Acceptance Rate: 14% • Net Price: $28,442 • SAT Range: 1380-1550 (#2 Catholic College)
66. Villanova University • Overall Niche Grade: A+ • Acceptance Rate: 28 % • Net Price: $36,840 • SAT Range: 1320-1470 (#4 Catholic College)
128. Saint Louis University • Overall Niche Grade: A • Acceptance Rate: 58 % • Net Price: $31,098 • SAT Range: 1170-1380 (#8 Catholic College)
152. University of Dayton • Overall Niche Grade: A • Acceptance Rate: 72 % • Net Price: $33,372 • SAT Range: 1120-1320 (#10 Catholic College)
157. University of Connecticut • Overall Niche Grade: A • Acceptance Rate: 49% • Net Price: $20,042 • SAT Range: 1200-1410
180. Creighton University • Overall Niche Grade: A- • Acceptance Rate: 74% • Net Price: $32,145 • SAT Range: 1170-1350 (#13 Catholic College)
216. Marquette University • Overall Niche Grade: A- • Acceptance Rate: 83% • Net Price: $34,120 • SAT Range: 1120-1320 (#18 Catholic College)
230. DePaul University • Overall Niche Grade: A- • Acceptance Rate: 68 % • Net Price: $32,022 • SAT Range: 1050-1260 (#20 Catholic College)
254. Butler University • Overall Niche Grade: A- • Acceptance Rate: 73 % • Net Price: $39,923 • SAT Range: 1150-1330
269. Providence College • Overall Niche Grade: A- • Acceptance Rate: 47% • Net Price: $35,796 • SAT Range: 1210-1350 (#27 Catholic College)
277. Seton Hall University • Overall Niche Grade: A- • Acceptance Rate: 74% • Net Price: $30,909 • SAT Range: 1150-1330 (#29 Catholic College)
320. Virginia Commonwealth • Overall Niche Grade: B+ • Acceptance Rate: 87% • Net Price: $20,968 • SAT Range: 1070-1260
481. Xavier University • Overall Niche Grade: B • Acceptance Rate: 76% • Net Price: $32,229 • SAT Range: 1070-1280 (#56 Catholic College)
865. St. John's University • Overall Niche Grade: B- • Acceptance Rate: 73% • Net Price: $25,816 • SAT Range: 1060-1250 (#104 Catholic College)
Related: Endowments, Enrolments, and Sports Revenue – HLOH Thread – July 30, 2021
TABLE 14: Undergraduate Enrolments in 2020
19,825 • Virginia Commonwealth
18,229 • University of Connecticut
12,784 • DePaul University
11,525 • St. John's University
8,175 • Marquette University
8,046 • University of Dayton
7,029 • Georgetown University
6,691 • Saint Louis University
6,528 • Villanova University
5,782 • Seton Hall University
4,834 • Xavier University
4,509 • Butler University
4,325 • Creighton University
3,891 • Providence College
Related: The 1950s: The Golden Age of Catholic Basketball – HLOH Thread – August 2, 2020
Related: History of Conference Realignments 1955-1991 – HLOH Thread – August 10, 2021
Related: Big East Conference: May 31, 1979 - July 1, 2013 – Wikipedia
Related: Big East Conference: July 1, 2013 - Present – Wikipedia
Related: 2010–2013 Big East Conference Realignment – Wikipedia
======================================================================================================================================
Last edited by Fieldhouse Flyer on Fri Sep 10, 2021 11:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Fieldhouse Flyer - Posts: 1389
- Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2014 5:11 am
Re: History of the Big East Conference and TV Rights Contrac
by Fieldhouse Flyer » Mon Sep 06, 2021 1:23 pm
Post #5
History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts
Post #1: History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: May 31, 1979 - December 10, 2012
Post #2: History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: December 11, 2012 – September 4, 2021
Post #3: Present and Future TV Rights Contracts
Post #4: Information about the Big East Universities and Most Likely Expansion Candidates
Post #5: Rankings for Men’s Basketball Expenses
Post #6: Why Xavier, Butler, and Creighton were chosen over Dayton, Saint Louis, and VCU
Post #7: Fieldhouse Flyer’s "You heard it here first" post - September 7, 2021
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Rankings for Men’s Basketball Expenses
Conference Realignment: What Next? - Page 37
Good find, kayako – thanks for posting the link.
======================================================================================================================================
History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts
Post #1: History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: May 31, 1979 - December 10, 2012
Post #2: History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: December 11, 2012 – September 4, 2021
Post #3: Present and Future TV Rights Contracts
Post #4: Information about the Big East Universities and Most Likely Expansion Candidates
Post #5: Rankings for Men’s Basketball Expenses
Post #6: Why Xavier, Butler, and Creighton were chosen over Dayton, Saint Louis, and VCU
Post #7: Fieldhouse Flyer’s "You heard it here first" post - September 7, 2021
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rankings for Men’s Basketball Expenses
Conference Realignment: What Next? - Page 37
On September 5, 2021 kayako wrote:
Lately I am feeling less dismissive about Wichita State and the A10 trio of VCU, Dayton, and SLU. All 4 have decent on-campus arenas, and more importantly their basketball budget is already above Butler's (Wichita State is ahead of Seton Hall, Xavier, and DePaul as well) according to 3 Man Weave's research. Seeing Gonzaga and Memphis getting so much headline lately, I don't know if I buy a basketball school being too "mid-major" to damage the BE brand.
Fun with Finances: Basketball Budgets - Jim Root, Three Man Weave - April 17, 2020
College basketball budgets are just one way of defining the strength of the conferences, but I do feel it’s one of the best (if not the best) methods for doing so; resources matter quite a bit in terms of how much a school can pay a coach, paying for/playing in buy games, etc. And the financial measurements paint a very clear divide - showing Mean and Median for the sake of combating outliers: [List of all 32 Division I Conferences with their Average and Median men’s basketball budgets.]
[Observations and Commentary by Jim Root]
Lastly, here’s the list of all schools: [List of all 353 Division I Conferences with their men’s basketball program expenses.]
Rank • Team • Conf. • Men’s Basketball Expenses
8. Marquette • Big East (#1) • $14,979,149
10. Villanova • Big East (#2) • $14,428,932
12. Georgetown • Big East (#3) • $13,573,946
20. Providence • Big East (#4) • $11,117,186
27. Gonzaga • WCC • $10,496,251
34. St. John's • Big East (#5) • $10,028,677
41. UConn • Big East (#6) • $9,325,922
51. Creighton • Big East (#7) • $8,590,055
60. Wichita State • American • $8,182,863
68. Seton Hall • Big East {#8) • $7,506,127
71. Dayton • Atlantic 10 (#1) • $7,434,825
72. St. Louis • Atlantic 10 (#2) • $7,428,566
73. Xavier • Big East (#9) • $7,406,374
80. DePaul • Big East (#10) • $6,793,520
85. St. Joseph's • Atlantic 10 (#3) • $6,152,876
87. VCU • Atlantic 10 (#4) • $6,102,633
90. Butler • Big East (#11) • $5,760,815
Good find, kayako – thanks for posting the link.
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Fieldhouse Flyer - Posts: 1389
- Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2014 5:11 am
Re: History of the Big East Conference and TV Rights Contrac
by Fieldhouse Flyer » Fri Sep 10, 2021 11:54 am
Post #6
History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts
Post #1: History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: May 31, 1979 - December 10, 2012
Post #2: History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: December 11, 2012 – September 4, 2021
Post #3: Present and Future TV Rights Contracts
Post #4: Information about the Big East Universities and Most Likely Expansion Candidates
Post #5: Rankings for Men’s Basketball Expenses
Post #6: Why Xavier, Butler, and Creighton were chosen over Dayton, Saint Louis, and VCU
Post #7: Fieldhouse Flyer’s "You heard it here first" post - September 7, 2021
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why Xavier, Butler, and Creighton were chosen over Dayton, Saint Louis, and VCU
November 29, 2012 • Xavier Takes a 5-1 Record on the Road To Purdue – Xavier University
December 1, 2012 • Xavier Secures Tough 63-57 Road Victory Over Purdue – Xavier University
December 4, 2012 • Men's Basketball At Nebraska Thursday For Final Trip To Devaney Center – Creighton University
December 5, 2012 • Fox Sports receives a second counter-offer from the Catholic 7: a 12-year contract for $3,750,000 per schools per year for 10, 11, or 12 schools, with the 3 to 5 additional schools selected solely by the Big East, but limited to their guaranteed short list of Xavier, Dayton, Saint Louis, Butler, Creighton, and Virginia Commonwealth.
December 7, 2012 • Creighton Posts 64-42 Win Over Nebraska in Lincoln – Creighton University
December 7, 2012 • Q: How Does Brad Stevens Compete with Big Schools for Star Recruits? A: He Doesn't. - Tony Rehagen, Indianapolis Monthly
► Brad Stevens – Wikipedia
December 7, 2012 • The deal is finally agreed.
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December 10, 2012 • Fieldhouse Flyer’s Evaluation of the Catholic Seven’s Guaranteed Short List
The criteria listed above would be the primary factors for the important decisions confronting the presidents of the Catholic 7 school, but they would also have a look at many secondary criteria, such as basketball arena capacity, average percentage of seats sold for home games, and home game attendance.
2011- 2012 NCAA MEN’S BASKETBALL ATTENDANCE – NCAA.org [7-page .pdf] – April, 2012
December 17, 2012 • How Big East's basketball schools decided to finally break off to form their own conference - Brendan Prunty, The Star-Ledger
Due to Xavier’s very considerable basketball success over the previous 30 years or so (including many nationally-ranked teams and NCAA Tournament successes), Xavier was always going to be the #1 choice for the Catholic 7. It wasn’t even close. The other candidate schools were far more difficult to differentiate, but in the end, Butler and Creighton got the nod. It is apparent in retrospection that immediate basketball success in the inaugural 2013-14 season was by far the most important factor for the Catholic 7, because their number one priority was to have a successful inaugural season with the national spotlight on the newly-established conference.
► Basketball Success (recent past, present, and near future): Tier 1: Xavier, Butler, and Creighton.
Tuesday March 19, 2013 - 4:52 pm ET • Butler, Creighton, Xavier join new Big East – Fox Sports
======================================================================================================================================
History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts
Post #1: History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: May 31, 1979 - December 10, 2012
Post #2: History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: December 11, 2012 – September 4, 2021
Post #3: Present and Future TV Rights Contracts
Post #4: Information about the Big East Universities and Most Likely Expansion Candidates
Post #5: Rankings for Men’s Basketball Expenses
Post #6: Why Xavier, Butler, and Creighton were chosen over Dayton, Saint Louis, and VCU
Post #7: Fieldhouse Flyer’s "You heard it here first" post - September 7, 2021
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why Xavier, Butler, and Creighton were chosen over Dayton, Saint Louis, and VCU
November 29, 2012 • Xavier Takes a 5-1 Record on the Road To Purdue – Xavier University
• Xavier has won six straight games against five different teams from the Big Ten Conference since the 2007-08 season.
• Xavier fourth-year head coach Chris Mack is a proven winner. Mack is 78-31 (.716) overall as the Xavier head coach. Mack has led Xavier to the NCAA Tournament in each of his three seasons at the helm, including the NCAA Sweet 16 in 2010 and 2012.
• Xavier is one of only four teams that have made the NCAA Sweet 16 four times in the last five years (2008-12): Kansas, Michigan State, North Carolina and Xavier. No team has made all of the last five Sweet 16s. Xavier is one of only eight schools that have made at least seven straight NCAA Tournament appearances, including 2012: Duke, Gonzaga, Kansas, Marquette, Michigan State, Texas, Wisconsin and Xavier.
December 1, 2012 • Xavier Secures Tough 63-57 Road Victory Over Purdue – Xavier University
December 4, 2012 • Men's Basketball At Nebraska Thursday For Final Trip To Devaney Center – Creighton University
Series History: Nebraska leads, 25-20 • Last Meeting: Creighton 76, Nebraska 66 on December 4, 2011 in Omaha.
Scouting No. 16 Creighton
Creighton is 7-1 this season, including wins over Wisconsin, Arizona State, UAB and Saint Joseph's.
Junior forward Doug McDermott (21.3 PPG and 7.1 RPG) is the nation's only returning consensus First Team All-American, as well as the nation's returning scorer (22.9 PPG last year). He's led the Jays in scoring and rebounding each of the past two seasons, and has already picked up MVC Freshman of the Year, MVC Newcomer of the Year, MVC Player of the Year and MVC Tournament MVP honors in his career.
The Bluejays returned 10 lettermen and four starters from last year's 29-6 team that reached the third round of the NCAA Tournament, and have been widely praised for having one of the nation's most potent offenses.
December 5, 2012 • Fox Sports receives a second counter-offer from the Catholic 7: a 12-year contract for $3,750,000 per schools per year for 10, 11, or 12 schools, with the 3 to 5 additional schools selected solely by the Big East, but limited to their guaranteed short list of Xavier, Dayton, Saint Louis, Butler, Creighton, and Virginia Commonwealth.
December 7, 2012 • Creighton Posts 64-42 Win Over Nebraska in Lincoln – Creighton University
December 7, 2012 • Q: How Does Brad Stevens Compete with Big Schools for Star Recruits? A: He Doesn't. - Tony Rehagen, Indianapolis Monthly
Since April, when his team lit up the city and the sports-watching world with its breath-taking run to the NCAA finale, analysts have been trying to figure out the key to Stevens’ success. How he started his career with more wins than any other coach in Division I history. How he led his tiny private school to within two points of a National Championship. Why he turned down moving trucks full of big-school money to stay.
► Brad Stevens – Wikipedia
December 7, 2012 • The deal is finally agreed.
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December 10, 2012 • Fieldhouse Flyer’s Evaluation of the Catholic Seven’s Guaranteed Short List
Basketball Success (recent past, present, and near future): Tier 1: Xavier, Butler, Creighton • Tier 2: Dayton, VCU, Saint Louis
Basketball Success (historical): Tier 1: Dayton • Tier 2: Xavier
Institutional Fit: Xavier, Saint Louis, Dayton, Creighton
Geographic Fit: Xavier, Dayton, Butler, Saint Louis, VCU
Academic Fit: Saint Louis, Dayton, Creighton, Butler
Support: Marquette was rumored to support Creighton’s membership.
Opposition: Xavier was rumored to oppose Dayton’s membership.
The criteria listed above would be the primary factors for the important decisions confronting the presidents of the Catholic 7 school, but they would also have a look at many secondary criteria, such as basketball arena capacity, average percentage of seats sold for home games, and home game attendance.
2011- 2012 NCAA MEN’S BASKETBALL ATTENDANCE – NCAA.org [7-page .pdf] – April, 2012
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Rank. School • Average Home Game Attendance
6. Creighton • 16,665
13. Marquette • 15,138
26. Connecticut • 12,640
28. Dayton • 12,154
35. Georgetown • 11,283
39. Xavier • 10,155
44. Villanova • 8,923
54. St. John's • 8,428
63. Providence • 7,883
66. Saint Louis • 7,757
67. DePaul • 7,740
70. VCU • 7,622
76. Seton Hall • 6,941
78. Butler • 6,599
December 17, 2012 • How Big East's basketball schools decided to finally break off to form their own conference - Brendan Prunty, The Star-Ledger
For the first time since conference realignment began in full almost 18 months ago, the Big East's basketball schools finally hold the power.
When talks to break off from the league began to accelerate a week ago, one Big East insider said: "A lot of lawyers are going to make a lot of money on this thing."
Individuals who are familiar with the thinking of the basketball-only schools have already begun to identify potential targets to bolster their ranks as early as the middle of last week. Atlantic 10 schools – Xavier, Dayton, Saint Louis and Butler -- are on the list, as is Missouri Valley Conference member Creighton.
The Catholic seven schools are most high on Xavier, which has long been a target of expansion talks of the Big East. But with Creighton's emergence as a consistent, national basketball power, the Bluejays are expected to have a large amount of support. Same for Butler, which made back-to-back National Championship game appearances in 2010 and 2011 and moved up from the Horizon League to the Atlantic 10 this season.
Due to Xavier’s very considerable basketball success over the previous 30 years or so (including many nationally-ranked teams and NCAA Tournament successes), Xavier was always going to be the #1 choice for the Catholic 7. It wasn’t even close. The other candidate schools were far more difficult to differentiate, but in the end, Butler and Creighton got the nod. It is apparent in retrospection that immediate basketball success in the inaugural 2013-14 season was by far the most important factor for the Catholic 7, because their number one priority was to have a successful inaugural season with the national spotlight on the newly-established conference.
► Basketball Success (recent past, present, and near future): Tier 1: Xavier, Butler, and Creighton.
Tuesday March 19, 2013 - 4:52 pm ET • Butler, Creighton, Xavier join new Big East – Fox Sports
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Last edited by Fieldhouse Flyer on Sat Sep 11, 2021 7:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Fieldhouse Flyer - Posts: 1389
- Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2014 5:11 am
Re: History of the Big East Conference and TV Rights Contrac
by Fieldhouse Flyer » Fri Sep 10, 2021 11:55 am
Post #7
History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts
Post #1: History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: May 31, 1979 - December 10, 2012
Post #2: History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: December 11, 2012 – September 4, 2021
Post #3: Present and Future TV Rights Contracts
Post #4: Information about the Big East Universities and Most Likely Expansion Candidates
Post #5: Rankings for Men’s Basketball Expenses
Post #6: Why Xavier, Butler, and Creighton were chosen over Dayton, Saint Louis, and VCU
Post #7: Fieldhouse Flyer’s "You heard it here first" post - September 7, 2021
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Fieldhouse Flyer’s "You heard it here first" post - September 7, 2021
Link: Page 38 of the Conference Realignment: What Next? thread.
Hmmm… if Dayton, Saint Louis, and VCU are NOT invited to join the Big East in late 2024 or early 2025, I’m quite certain that I will get pilloried on HLOH, and deservedly so.
But how likely am I to be wrong with this prediction? The available evidence strongly suggests that I have a very good chance of being right. Please allow me to share with you the logic behind my bold prediction. We’ll begin on February 10, 2013.
Fox approached C7 while still in Big East. They have a greater need, so will pay more. Leagues only worth what someone will pay.
- Brett McMurphy, ESPN - February 10, 2013
Did FOX Sports create the Catholic-7 split? – Brian Ewart, SB Nation/Villanova Basketball - February 10, 2013
In November 2012, when Fox Sports initiated the negotiations with the Catholic 7 schools, both sides knew that the Catholic 7 had the upper hand in the negotiations. As the TV Rights Contract expiration date of June 30, 2025 approaches, both sides know that Fox Sports will have the upper hand against the Big East in the next round of negotiations, for reasons explained in detail in Post #3: Present and Future TV Rights Contracts.
As 2025 approaches, it is instructive to look at the ‘big picture’ of TV Rights Contracts in order to gain an appreciation of the relative importance of the Big East TV Rights Contract to Fox Sports in 2025. In the real world of business, context is everything.
Sports Media Rights: Current TV Deals and What’s on the Horizon - John Cassillo, TV Revolution.com - February 18, 2021
Note the following:
(1) Fox Sports is under no obligation to offer the Big East a TV Rights Contract in 2025. That decision is the sole preserve of Fox Sports.
(2) If Fox Sports DOES offer the Big East a TV Rights Contract in 2025, it will not be a generous offer, and may well be less than the $3.75M per school per year the Big East got in the 2013 TV Rights Contract.
(3) If Fox’s competitors are not interested in the Big East in 2024, Fox Sports will be the only player at the negotiating table in 2024.
(4) A league is only worth what someone will pay. - Brett McMurphy, ESPN - February 10, 2013
(5) If Fox Sports does NOT offer a TV Rights Contract to the Big East in late 2024 or early 2025, or if Fox Sports submits an offer that is far below the expectations of the Big East’s presidents and athletic directors, they will be forced to look elsewhere while everyone knows they’re in a desperate situation.
(6) If CBS or NBC (or another competitor) DOES offer a TV Rights Contract to the Big East in 2024, Fox Sports will have the right of first refusal.
(7) A standard feature in all TV Rights Contract for sports is the ‘Right of first refusal’. Under the terms of the present 2013 contract, Fox Sports is granted a right of first refusal. Hypothetically in 2024, if CBS offers the Big East a TV Rights Contract for $3.25M per school per year, Fox Sports can match that offer and retain the contract.
(8) Consequently, there is absolutely no incentive for Fox Sports to make a decent offer to Fox Sports in 2024, because Fox Sports will be holding all of the cards in 2024.
(9) Fox Sports may be too busy in 2024 and 2025 with the preparation of TV Rights Contract offers for bigger, more important contracts than the Big East contract. Even Fox Sports has limited resources, and successful companies tend to put their best people on the most important contracts. The Big East contract will be far less important to Fox Sports in 2025 than it was in 2012, and possibly not important at all if Fox Sports decides to put their resources into aggressively tendering for bigger-money contracts – a real possibility.
(10) In November 2012, when Fox Sports initiated the negotiations with the Catholic 7 schools, both sides knew that the Catholic 7 had the upper hand in the negotiations, but Fox Sports still expected to sign the deal for no more than $3.50M per school per year – some $2M per school per year MORE than the $1.5M per school per year that the basketball schools were presently getting from their ESPN TV Rights Contract. As things turned out, The Catholic 7 used their considerable leverage in the negotiations to get a better deal from Fox Sports than Fox wanted to offer, as $3.75M per school per year was very close to Fox Sports’ ceiling offer.
(11) In late 2024 or early 2025, when negotiations for the next Big East TV Rights Contract may begin, Fox Sports will want more ‘game inventory’ in the new TV Rights Contract, and to greatly increase their market share and ratings in the St. Louis, Richmond, and Dayton DMAs. Fox Sports can simply offer the Big East $3.50M per school per year for a 14-member conference (with Fox Sports specifying Dayton, Saint Louis, and Virginia Commonwealth as the three expansion teams) OR $3.00 M per school per year for the existing 11-member conference, in a 10-year contract offer – a difference of [($500,000 per school per year)*(14 schools)*(10 years)] = $70,000,000.
(12) In late 2024 or early 2025, Fox could well be in the position to offer the Big East a “take-it-or-leave-it” Best and Final Offer in the form of a registered letter, signed by a Fox Sports Senior Accounts Manager. No couriered letter from Fox Sports’ CEO. No meeting at a swank Manhattan hotel.
No posh Boardroom. No free meals and luxurious hotel rooms.
(13) That’s called ‘leverage’, and it’s the most important factor in all contract negotiations. The Catholic 7 used their leverage in the 2012 negotiations with Fox Sports to get the best deal possible for themselves (because they had the leverage) and in late 2024 or early 2025, Fox Sports will use their leverage in the negotiations with the Big East to get the best deal possible for Fox Sports (because Fox Sports will have very strong leverage). It’s as simple as that.
* * * * *
Link: Page 40 of the Conference Realignment: What Next? thread.
Xudash -
Fox Sports does not give a damn about Dayton’s proximity to Cincinnati. None whatsoever. Only Xavier fans are worried about that.
Fox Sports does not give a damn about round-robin regular season games. In Fact, Fox Sports would get much better ratings showing a Xavier vs. Dayton game or a Marquette vs. Saint Louis game than showing DePaul play Georgetown three times every season (including the Big East Tournament).
Fox Sports does not have an emotional attachment to the Big East Conference. It’s a Sports Property on the company’s books – nothing more.
If, as I suspect, Fox Sports offers the Big East presidents a “take-it-or-leave-it” 10-year contract for $3.50M per school per year for a 14-member conference (with Fox Sports specifying Dayton, Saint Louis, and Virginia Commonwealth as the three expansion teams) OR $3.00M per school per year for the existing 11-member conference, do you honestly believe that the other 10 Big East presidents will flush the difference of $70,000,000 down the toilet because the president of Xavier University doesn’t want the University of Dayton to join the Big East?
While you’re pondering that very important question, I’ll conclude by restating: In short, Fox will be able to force the Big East to expand to 14 teams in 2025, it is likely they will do so, and the Dayton Flyers, Saint Louis Billikens, and VCU Rams will join the Big East for the 2025-26 season.
You heard it here first.
======================================================================================================================================
History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts
Post #1: History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: May 31, 1979 - December 10, 2012
Post #2: History of the Big East Conference and its TV Rights Contracts: December 11, 2012 – September 4, 2021
Post #3: Present and Future TV Rights Contracts
Post #4: Information about the Big East Universities and Most Likely Expansion Candidates
Post #5: Rankings for Men’s Basketball Expenses
Post #6: Why Xavier, Butler, and Creighton were chosen over Dayton, Saint Louis, and VCU
Post #7: Fieldhouse Flyer’s "You heard it here first" post - September 7, 2021
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Fieldhouse Flyer’s "You heard it here first" post - September 7, 2021
Link: Page 38 of the Conference Realignment: What Next? thread.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------On September 7, 2021, Fieldhouse Flyer wrote:On September 7, 2021, redmen9194 wrote:
Conference realignment this go around has no impact on the Big East.
I agree.
On September 7, 2021, redmen9194 wrote:
We do not need to expand nor would expansion be of any benefit to us. 11 teams with a 20 game schedule is perfect.
Let's just sit back and play basketball like Dave Gavitt intended us to.
Again, I agree. Under the present TV Rights Contract (2013-2025), Fox Sports has no leverage to force the Big East to expand. Any decision to expand prior to the expiry of the contract in 2025 is at the sole discretion of the presidents of the 11 Big East institutions – requiring a 75% majority vote.
In 2025, the situation changes dramatically, as Fox Sports will be in a position to dictate the terms of the next TV Rights Contract. Fox will want more eyes watching Big East basketball on TV, an increase in market share in ratings (principally, in the St. Louis, Richmond, and Dayton DMAs), and selling more TV expensive commercials reaching bigger TV viewing audiences.
In short, Fox will be able to force the Big East to expand to 14 teams in 2025, it is likely they will do so, and the Dayton Flyers, Saint Louis Billikens, and VCU Rams will join the Big East for the 2025-26 season. You heard it here first.
Hmmm… if Dayton, Saint Louis, and VCU are NOT invited to join the Big East in late 2024 or early 2025, I’m quite certain that I will get pilloried on HLOH, and deservedly so.
But how likely am I to be wrong with this prediction? The available evidence strongly suggests that I have a very good chance of being right. Please allow me to share with you the logic behind my bold prediction. We’ll begin on February 10, 2013.
Fox approached C7 while still in Big East. They have a greater need, so will pay more. Leagues only worth what someone will pay.
- Brett McMurphy, ESPN - February 10, 2013
Did FOX Sports create the Catholic-7 split? – Brian Ewart, SB Nation/Villanova Basketball - February 10, 2013
ESPN's Brett McMurphy reports that the upstart cable sports network had been talking to the Catholic 7 schools since before they announced their separation from the football side of the Big East.
Since they seemingly initiated the split, FOX is willing to pay up for the rights to broadcast the Catholic 7 (plus between three and five additional schools). The most recent ESPN report puts the FOX offer between $3.00 million and $3.33 million per school per year — a significant raise over the $1.5 million or so that each school makes from the current Big East deal. ESPN's sources believe that FOX is likely to land the Catholic 7's television rights based on these offers. The move for FOX to instigate a split in the Big East conference is an interesting move …
In November 2012, when Fox Sports initiated the negotiations with the Catholic 7 schools, both sides knew that the Catholic 7 had the upper hand in the negotiations. As the TV Rights Contract expiration date of June 30, 2025 approaches, both sides know that Fox Sports will have the upper hand against the Big East in the next round of negotiations, for reasons explained in detail in Post #3: Present and Future TV Rights Contracts.
As 2025 approaches, it is instructive to look at the ‘big picture’ of TV Rights Contracts in order to gain an appreciation of the relative importance of the Big East TV Rights Contract to Fox Sports in 2025. In the real world of business, context is everything.
Sports Media Rights: Current TV Deals and What’s on the Horizon - John Cassillo, TV Revolution.com - February 18, 2021
Going year by year, a quick breakdown on what’s due for a new contract and who could be involved.Fieldhouse Flyer copied the Payouts in the bar chart above into a MS Excel spreadsheet, divided them all by the Big East’s $46,000,000 and wrote:
ANNUAL PAYOUTS FROM PRESENT TV RIGHTS CONTRACTS
Annual Payout • (Rank) • Recipient • Multiple of Big East’s Payout
$7,500,000,000 • (#1) • NFL • 163.0
$2,600,000,000 • (#2) • NBA • 56.5
$1,600,000,000 • (#3) • MLB • 34.8
$990,000,000 • (#4) • March Madness • 21.5
$600,000,000 • (#5) • Olympics • 13.0
$580,000,000 • (#6) • NASCAR • 12.6
$470,000,000 • (#7) • College Football Playoffs • 10.2
$440,000,000 • (#8) • Big Ten • 9.57
$300,000,000 • (#9) • SEC • 6.52
$277,000,000 • (#10) • Pac-12 • 6.02
($15,357,000,000 • subtotal: annual payout to 10 largest recipients)
$240,000,000 • (#11) • ACC • 5.22
$200,000,000 • (#12) • NHL • 4.35
$200,000,000 • (#13) • Big 12 • 4.35
$90,000,000 • (#14) • Major League Soccer • 1.96
$87,500,000 • (#15) • World Cup Soccer • 1.90
$80,000,000 • (#16) • English Premier League (EPL) Soccer • 1.74
$75,600,000 • (#17) • PGA Golf • 1.64
($16,330,100,000 • subtotal: annual payout to 17 largest recipients)
$46,000,000 • (#18) • Big East • 1.00
$35,700,000 • (#19) • NCAA • 0.78
$25,000,000 • (#20) • WBNA • 0.54
$15,000,000 • (#21) • Notre Dame • 0.33
$16,451,800,000 • Total: Annual Payout to 21 Largest Recipients
(Big East’s annual payout / annual payout to 10 largest recipients)X(100%) = ($46,000,000 / $15,357,000,000)x100 = 0.30%
(Big East’s annual payout / annual payout to 17 largest recipients)X(100%) = ($46,000,000 / $16,330,100,000)x100 = 0.28%
(Big East’s annual payout / Annual Payout to 21 Largest Recipients)X(100%) = ($46,000,000 / $16,451,800,000)x100 = 0.28%
2024
NASCAR deals expire
NCAA (non-CFP or March Madness) exclusivity with ESPN expires
College Football Playoff exclusivity with ESPN expires
Big Ten deals expire
Pac-12 deal expires
This is where the ground can shift for both networks and leagues.
NASCAR may not “seem” like a big property the way it was trending toward in the early aughts, but it’s still worth the sixth-most annually of any U.S. sports property. Provided Peacock and USA Network actually become bigger homes for sports by this point (something that NASCAR would be a good-sized part of), that could give NBC a desire to re-up. With FOX likely having to fork over even more for Big Ten rights (we’ll get there), plus other interesting college properties up for bid, NASCAR rights probably aren’t first in line for them. CBS seems unlikely to get involved given its golf commitments. WarnerMedia could be a player if it wants summer content beyond baseball.
Split between ESPN and FOX for $440 million per year, Big Ten rights are already incredibly high as it is, but FOX seems like the preferred partner in recent years and has a stake in the Big Ten Network. Assuming the Big Ten Network isn’t dropped from basic packages (could definitely happen), the conference will be in an advantageous position to ask FOX and/or ESPN for another high number. Another option: CBS grabs afternoon rights to the Big Ten (and some basketball inventory) to replace the SEC deal. OR NBC could jump in if Notre Dame opts to put football under the ESPN umbrella with the rest of its sports (see below).
Really, a lot hinges on what happens with the College Football Playoff. While the current arrangement is lucrative for the sport, one-sided games and a lack of parity (20 of the 28 spots since 2015 have gone to Clemson, Alabama, Ohio State and Oklahoma), is helping fuel a steady ratings decline, along with questions about the current four-team format and ESPN’s stewardship of that event as it pertains to year-round coverage of the sport.
It’s unlikely that the Playoff leaves ESPN, but a return to it would likely require alterations to the event. An expansion to six or eight teams would mean more games, more intrigue and (obviously) more money forked over. ESPN doesn’t want to lose something it helped create — especially this soon — so it’ll make changes. A bigger playoff could be worth twice as much as the current $470 million.
A bigger price tag could mean it’s easier for ESPN to either get outbid for the Big Ten rights or the Pac-12’s. We’ve noted where competition comes from on the Big Ten front. For the Pac-12, a tech player like Amazon or Apple is more likely to offer more cash. Recent Pac-12 results have seen the conference retreat from national attention in both football and men’s basketball, and the league’s messed up its TV rights so badly that the league finally pushed out commissioner Larry Scott.
A heavy streaming deal doesn’t necessarily solve all of the Pac-12’s exposure issues. But a larger deal would at least give the league and its members (which include college athletic heavyweights like USC and Oregon, among others) more resources to play with and upgrade their on-field talent — thus making the teams a more valuable asset on TV.
2025
NBA/WNBA deals expire
Notre Dame exclusivity with NBC expires
Big 12 deals expire
Big East deals expire
Given that it’s basketball-specific, don’t expect a major uptick for Big East rights — especially if FOX has been laying out more money for Big Ten and/or Pac-12 games. The main draw for the Big East is Villanova, at the moment, after the Wildcats won two of the last four national titles (2016, 2018) and their continued presence near the top of the sport should lift all boats in the league. In an ideal world for the Big East, it’s not buried on FS1 so much. But no other network beyond ESPN (its long-time partner before 2013) could really offer better exposure.
Note the following:
(1) Fox Sports is under no obligation to offer the Big East a TV Rights Contract in 2025. That decision is the sole preserve of Fox Sports.
(2) If Fox Sports DOES offer the Big East a TV Rights Contract in 2025, it will not be a generous offer, and may well be less than the $3.75M per school per year the Big East got in the 2013 TV Rights Contract.
(3) If Fox’s competitors are not interested in the Big East in 2024, Fox Sports will be the only player at the negotiating table in 2024.
(4) A league is only worth what someone will pay. - Brett McMurphy, ESPN - February 10, 2013
(5) If Fox Sports does NOT offer a TV Rights Contract to the Big East in late 2024 or early 2025, or if Fox Sports submits an offer that is far below the expectations of the Big East’s presidents and athletic directors, they will be forced to look elsewhere while everyone knows they’re in a desperate situation.
(6) If CBS or NBC (or another competitor) DOES offer a TV Rights Contract to the Big East in 2024, Fox Sports will have the right of first refusal.
(7) A standard feature in all TV Rights Contract for sports is the ‘Right of first refusal’. Under the terms of the present 2013 contract, Fox Sports is granted a right of first refusal. Hypothetically in 2024, if CBS offers the Big East a TV Rights Contract for $3.25M per school per year, Fox Sports can match that offer and retain the contract.
(8) Consequently, there is absolutely no incentive for Fox Sports to make a decent offer to Fox Sports in 2024, because Fox Sports will be holding all of the cards in 2024.
On February 18, 2021, John Cassillo (TV Revolution.com) wrote:
2024
NASCAR deals expire. (Present TV Rights Contract Annual Payout: $580,000,000 )
NCAA (non-CFP or March Madness) exclusivity with ESPN expires. (Present TV Rights Contract Annual Payout: $35,700,000 )
College Football Playoff exclusivity with ESPN expires. (Present TV Rights Contract Annual Payout: $470,000,000 )
Big Ten deals expire. (Present TV Rights Contract Annual Payout: $440,000,000 )
Pac-12 deal expires . (Present TV Rights Contract Annual Payout: $277,000,000 )
Total Annual Payout for the five TV Rights Contracts expiring in 2024: $1,802,700,000
2025
NBA deals expire. (Present TV Rights Contract Annual Payout: $2,600,000,000)
WNBA deals expire. (Present TV Rights Contract Annual Payout: $25,000,000)
Notre Dame exclusivity with NBC expires. (Present TV Rights Contract Annual Payout: $15,000,000 )
Big 12 deals expire. (Present TV Rights Contract Annual Payout: $200,000,000 )
Big East deals expire. (Present TV Rights Contract Annual Payout: $46,000,000 )
Total Annual Payout for the five TV Rights Contracts expiring in 2025: $2,886,000,000
[($46,000,000) / ($2,886,000,000)]x100% = 1.6% of the present value of TV Rights Contracts expiring in 2025.
(9) Fox Sports may be too busy in 2024 and 2025 with the preparation of TV Rights Contract offers for bigger, more important contracts than the Big East contract. Even Fox Sports has limited resources, and successful companies tend to put their best people on the most important contracts. The Big East contract will be far less important to Fox Sports in 2025 than it was in 2012, and possibly not important at all if Fox Sports decides to put their resources into aggressively tendering for bigger-money contracts – a real possibility.
(10) In November 2012, when Fox Sports initiated the negotiations with the Catholic 7 schools, both sides knew that the Catholic 7 had the upper hand in the negotiations, but Fox Sports still expected to sign the deal for no more than $3.50M per school per year – some $2M per school per year MORE than the $1.5M per school per year that the basketball schools were presently getting from their ESPN TV Rights Contract. As things turned out, The Catholic 7 used their considerable leverage in the negotiations to get a better deal from Fox Sports than Fox wanted to offer, as $3.75M per school per year was very close to Fox Sports’ ceiling offer.
(11) In late 2024 or early 2025, when negotiations for the next Big East TV Rights Contract may begin, Fox Sports will want more ‘game inventory’ in the new TV Rights Contract, and to greatly increase their market share and ratings in the St. Louis, Richmond, and Dayton DMAs. Fox Sports can simply offer the Big East $3.50M per school per year for a 14-member conference (with Fox Sports specifying Dayton, Saint Louis, and Virginia Commonwealth as the three expansion teams) OR $3.00 M per school per year for the existing 11-member conference, in a 10-year contract offer – a difference of [($500,000 per school per year)*(14 schools)*(10 years)] = $70,000,000.
(12) In late 2024 or early 2025, Fox could well be in the position to offer the Big East a “take-it-or-leave-it” Best and Final Offer in the form of a registered letter, signed by a Fox Sports Senior Accounts Manager. No couriered letter from Fox Sports’ CEO. No meeting at a swank Manhattan hotel.
No posh Boardroom. No free meals and luxurious hotel rooms.
(13) That’s called ‘leverage’, and it’s the most important factor in all contract negotiations. The Catholic 7 used their leverage in the 2012 negotiations with Fox Sports to get the best deal possible for themselves (because they had the leverage) and in late 2024 or early 2025, Fox Sports will use their leverage in the negotiations with the Big East to get the best deal possible for Fox Sports (because Fox Sports will have very strong leverage). It’s as simple as that.
* * * * *
Link: Page 40 of the Conference Realignment: What Next? thread.
On September 8, 2021, Xudash wrote:
Relative to the other two schools that VCU would compete against for a slot, its biggest competition probably is Saint Louis though Saint Louis seems to have lacked on a performance basis behind both VCU and Dayton. Still, there is no question that the school would make the cut if conditions ever warranted the Big East extending an invitation to a mid-major. It provides Saint Louis as a market, and it provides some proximity to Creighton, etc.
Importantly, it does not infringe upon any existing member's area. Dayton is in the worse shape possible for expansion in that regard. It has a loyal following, but it's in Dayton, which doesn't add anything in its own right.
That brings us back to where we stand presently: in a strong position as a conference with a solid existing configuration of 11 schools, with the round robin being of value at this time, and with an expectation for a material increase in our media agreement in the not too distant future.
Xudash -
Fox Sports does not give a damn about Dayton’s proximity to Cincinnati. None whatsoever. Only Xavier fans are worried about that.
Fox Sports does not give a damn about round-robin regular season games. In Fact, Fox Sports would get much better ratings showing a Xavier vs. Dayton game or a Marquette vs. Saint Louis game than showing DePaul play Georgetown three times every season (including the Big East Tournament).
Fox Sports does not have an emotional attachment to the Big East Conference. It’s a Sports Property on the company’s books – nothing more.
If, as I suspect, Fox Sports offers the Big East presidents a “take-it-or-leave-it” 10-year contract for $3.50M per school per year for a 14-member conference (with Fox Sports specifying Dayton, Saint Louis, and Virginia Commonwealth as the three expansion teams) OR $3.00M per school per year for the existing 11-member conference, do you honestly believe that the other 10 Big East presidents will flush the difference of $70,000,000 down the toilet because the president of Xavier University doesn’t want the University of Dayton to join the Big East?
While you’re pondering that very important question, I’ll conclude by restating: In short, Fox will be able to force the Big East to expand to 14 teams in 2025, it is likely they will do so, and the Dayton Flyers, Saint Louis Billikens, and VCU Rams will join the Big East for the 2025-26 season.
You heard it here first.
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Fieldhouse Flyer - Posts: 1389
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Re: History of the Big East Conference and TV Rights Contrac
by Vill » Sat Sep 11, 2021 10:32 am
While you’re pondering that very important question, I’ll conclude by restating: In short, Fox will be able to force the Big East to expand to 14 teams in 2025, it is likely they will do so, and the Dayton Flyers, Saint Louis Billikens, and VCU Rams will join the Big East for the 2025-26 season.
I haven't been here all off season but come back to this drivel from a Dayton fan. Please stop. I can't even scroll through all of your posts fast enough without getting a migraine.
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Re: History of the Big East Conference and TV Rights Contrac
by Fieldhouse Flyer » Fri Oct 01, 2021 7:19 am
.
Vill et al. - please note that the purpose of this thread and its companion thread Endowments, Enrolments, and Sports Revenue is to enable and encourage all HLOH posters to engage in dialectic discussions by providing to all HLOH posters a common trove of fundamental factual information on which to base those discussions. Those of you who profess a knowledge, interest, or loyalty to the Big East Conference would greatly benefit from the information contained in these two threads, as they contain an abundance of facts which have not been previously published anywhere, such as:
Endowments, Enrolments, and Sports Revenue - Post #11
Vill et al. - please note that the purpose of this thread and its companion thread Endowments, Enrolments, and Sports Revenue is to enable and encourage all HLOH posters to engage in dialectic discussions by providing to all HLOH posters a common trove of fundamental factual information on which to base those discussions. Those of you who profess a knowledge, interest, or loyalty to the Big East Conference would greatly benefit from the information contained in these two threads, as they contain an abundance of facts which have not been previously published anywhere, such as:
Endowments, Enrolments, and Sports Revenue - Post #11
======================================================================================================================================On September 29, 2021, Fieldhouse Flyer wrote:
Post #11: Conference Revenue Summaries: TV Rights Payouts to Schools and Total Sports Payouts to Schools (with TABLES 26 to 34)
NCAA Has Confirmed Its Basketball Revenue Distribution Plan For 2021, But Impact Of 2020 Will Linger - Kristi Dosh, Forbes - February 28, 2021The impact on athletic department finances
For institutions in the Power Five conferences, distributions from the NCAA account for a lower percentage of total revenue than in the mid-majors due to the television rights contracts those conferences each has with one or more major networks. Those television rights contracts are estimated to get approximately 80% of their value from football and 20% of their value from basketball.
Realignment Today: Reports indicate Big 12 zeroing in on making a serious push to expand with 4 schools - Matt Tait, KU Sports.com – Sept. 3, 2021A source told McMurphy that the Big 12 decision makers viewed TV audience, football status and market size as the three most important factors in their discussions of which schools to add. But, McMurphy also reported that each school’s basketball brand carried significant weight, with the Big 12 putting 75% of its considerations toward football and the remaining 25% on basketball.
The information in the two preceeding articles is not contradictoty. The sports broadcasters (ESPN, CBS Sports, Fox Sports, etc.) place an 80%/20% split on the respective valus of the two sports, while the conferences and universities use a more generous [to basketball] 75%/25% split for the Fixed Distributed Payments, because the universities’ basketball programs have proportionally higher fixed costs relative to their football programs. In simpler terms, a 75%/25% split does not penalize the basketball programs because of their cost structure.
TABLE 32: Gross Annual TV Rights Payments per SchoolAnnual TV Rights Payment* = TV Rights Payment to Conf. / No. of Schools • Conference • 75% Football + 25% Basketball = Total
$31,428,571 = $440,000,000 / 14 • Big Ten Conference • $23,571,429 + $7,857,143 = $31,428,571
$23,083,333 = $277,000,000 / 12 • Pac-12 Conference • $17,312,500 + $5,770,833 = $23,083,333
$21,428,571 = $300,000,000 / 14 • Southeastern Conference • $16,071,429 + $5,357,143 = $21,428,571
$20,000,000 = $200,000,000 / 10 • Big 12 Conference • $15,000,000 + $5,000,000 = $20,000,000
$16,000,000 = $240,000,000 / 15 • Atlantic Coast Conference • $12,000,000 + $4,000,000 = $16,000,000
$4,166,667 = $45,833,333 / 11 • Big East Conference • $0 + $4,166,667 = $4,166,667
* Including 10% which is paid to each conference's head office for salaries, expenses, pensions for conference employees, etc., etc.
Therefore, 10% of the Gross Annual TV Rights Payments per School goes to each conference’s head office, with the other 90% distributed to the confernce’s universities.
TABLE 33: Net Annual Media Rights Payments per School for FootballNet Annual Media Rights Payments for Football per school = 90% of Gross Annual Media Rights Payments • Conference
$21,214,286 per school = 0.90 * $23,571,429 per school • Big Ten Conference
$15,581,250 per school = 0.90 * $17,312,500 per school • Pac-12 Conference
$14,464,286 per school = 0.90 * $16,071,429 per school • Southeastern Conference
$13,500,000 per school = 0.90 * $15,000,000 per school • Big 12 Conference
$10,800,000 per school = 0.90 * $12,000,000 per school • Atlantic Coast Conference
$0 per school = 0.90 * $0 per school • Big East Conference
TABLE 34: Net Annual Media Rights Payments per School for Men's BasketballNet Annual Media Rights Payments for Basketball per school = 90% of Gross Annual Media Rights Payments • Conference
$7,071,429 per school = 0.90 * $7,857,143 per school • Big Ten Conference
$5,193,750 per school = 0.90 * $5,770,833 per school • Pac-12 Conference
$4,821,429 per school = 0.90 * $5,357,143 per school • Southeastern Conference
$4,500,000 per school = 0.90 * $5,000,000 per school • Big 12 Conference
$3,750,000 per school = 0.90 * $4,166,667 per school • Big East Conference
$3,600,000 per school = 0.90 * $4,000,000 per school • Atlantic Coast Conference
Note that the TV Rights Contract for the Big East Conference pays more per school than the TV Rights Contract for the ACC.
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