The Big East Wants $200 Million Per Year From TV
The Big East apparently turned down a new TV contract similar to the ACC's $155 million per year deal, and it hopes to get $200 million annually. The reason? The Pac-12 deal is soooo big, you, uh, can't help but give the Big East an exorbitant sum too? By comparison, the SEC's combined CBS and ESPN contracts give the conference $205 million annually.
Granted, the basketball portion of the Big East's next contract will be split 17 ways (it'll go into effect after TCU joins), so the all the schools won't be getting SEC money. However if you doubt the Big East's ability to get an eye-popping number, just consider that ESPN and Fox will again be bidding against Comcast-owned NBC. That's the combination that made the magic happen for the Pac-12.
Incidentally if the Big East can get that $200 million, especially if any of it comes from ESPN, I'll bet Mike Slive will be on the phone with the Worldwide Leader within the hour.
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I wouldn't be surprised
if there wasn’t some deal in the works for an espn backed network that’s been taking place for a while now. That way the sec could get more money and espn would get something from it as well.
You mean a network like...ESPN?
Why would ESPN undercut themselves? I don’t see what they get by giving ground this early in the contract. The SEC was unhappy enough after the Pac12 deal, don’t see how the BE getting bucks makes much worse. Even so, I will be surprised if the BE can get that much or that ESPN and Fox team together again to make it happen.
by ev on Aug 3, 2011 1:34 PM EDT up reply actions
The Big East’s best chance at getting that much is if Comcast decides to overpay to get a BCS conference for NBC and Versus. It could happen.
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True
However Comcast just picked up the Pac12 network. With ND, it’s not like they don’t have any content.
by ev on Aug 3, 2011 2:34 PM EDT up reply actions
Comcast will merely carry the Pac-12 Networks. It will not get a cut of the advertising money spent on the P12N Owning the broadcast rights to a conference (through NBC/Versus) is completely different.
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True but they are not doing it for free
and those games are still taking up time slots. Remember Comcast had a limit with the Pac12, that is what allowed ESPN/Fox to pick them up. While the pool of money seems endless, it’s not. The only question is where is the upper limit for the BE. I think it will be a lot closer to $15M than $20M.
by ev on Aug 4, 2011 12:44 AM EDT up reply actions
it COULD happen
but it’s hard to see a huge bidding war. Especially since the Pac-12 just moved into the Big East’s (and WAC’s) former territory, Thursday and Friday nights. That’s a meaningful hit to Big East TV rights, since clearly they can no longer be the best league on at the time.
Maybe if they move into Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday, but I kind of doubt they want to play middle of the week. Of course, if they do make that choice, then you can flush all the other leagues’ TV rights down the toilet, since suddenly there will be NO time when they can be highlighted and draw the “I want to watch the best CFB game around, so what’s on” crowd.
espn doesn't own
all rights. It makes just as much sense as the longhorn network and it’s a larger footprint. ESPN wants to own college sports. Knowing what they know now, I’m sure they wish they could’ve partnered with the Big 10 rather than being so aggressive in their negotiations. They would rather overpay to make somebody happy than lose them altogether.
by Mark Mandingo on Aug 3, 2011 2:25 PM EDT up reply actions
Except the LHN is pure saturation, it's not a good comparison
ESPN already owns college sports and they already own the SEC. Remember they paid the SEC to “not” create a network, there is little incentive for them to change the deal at this early point in the contract. As for the LHN, ESPN has already shown it doesn’t have enough football content for their taste. That is why they went out and bought an extra game from Fox. It’s way to early to make many comparisons to the LHN, as pointed out on this blog, ESPN knowingly overpaid for it from the get go. Not sure they want to do that again without knowing what they will be getting from the first deal.
by ev on Aug 3, 2011 2:41 PM EDT up reply actions
It really depends on what the term "look ins" means
Slive has said that its in the contract that:
“at periodic points during the life of the contract, we can sit down with ESPN and take a look-in and look at the status of television, technology, all aspects of television, and at that point make adjustments that the parties agree are appropriate to make sure that everything that we intended to achieve with the contracts would in fact be available to us.”
ESPN has said that it’s not an out clause, but at the same time it’s something. It makes more sense to pay for more rights and develop a network than to just pay the SEC more money for nothing extra. One of the things that gets repeatedly brought up about the SEC deal is how we thought we’d be seeing a lot more non revenue sports on TV than espn has been showing on the main ESPN networks. When starting a network, rights fees are the expense. They’ll have the rights, now start the network. If Foxsports can have 18 regional networks, ESPN can surely make a conference network work in an area that craves college sports.
by Mark Mandingo on Aug 3, 2011 3:02 PM EDT up reply actions
I agree
and it’s why I was so happy the Pac12 went with the Big10 model instead of the SCE version. Still you can’t complain too hard, I see way more SEC sports out west than prior to the deal (meaning it was almost zero before). As for the “look in” the problem is I don’t really see anything different as far as TV, technology and such that is different now than when the SEC made the deal. The networks like the Pac12 are not new, the Big10 had one at the time of the SEC deal didn’t they? As far as I can tell, the only thing different is the amount everyone else is getting.
by ev on Aug 3, 2011 4:00 PM EDT up reply actions
I think
The Big East has far more limited football appeal which drives the money, but far greater basketball appeal. Of course, they also have 17 basketball schools to split that income amongst. Once everything is sorted, I think the conference receives a figure that sounds big, but after the per school breakdown is representative of its place as an AQ-lite standing in the world.
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the numbers will be complicated
because the football and basketball deals have to be separate (unless the non-football schools split off). Basketball gets split 17 ways, football just 9. Odds are football school total numbers will be better than the ACC and non-bribed Big 12 schools (Texas, A&M, Oklahoma), but note that the Big 12’s first-tier rights haven’t been redone yet (and won’t be until 2013 or 2014, I think) even if they look better because the same money’s being split 10 ways instead of 12.
I'm interested in seeing what the Big12 will get
with their first tier rights. The problem I see is they have almost no content to sell, about 12 games and no CCG. They gave an inordinate number of games to Fox to land a big deal to keep the conference together. While I think they will get top dollar per game, they just don’t have enough games.
by ev on Aug 4, 2011 4:15 PM EDT up reply actions
I would be curious what the breakdown is between CF and CB?
And I would argue that the BE getting $200M per year isn’t overpaying, its just the value of sports programming. Its going up everywhere, and since I doubt that networks are in the business of losing money, I would say the increases are a market correction.
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