Big Ten Media Rights / Conference Realignment

#1      

Dan

Admin
Sources: Fox, Big Ten Closing In On Media Rights Agreement

Fox is close to signing a deal that gives it half of the Big Ten’s available media rights package, according to several sources. Deal terms still are flexible – both in terms of money and rights. However, the two sides have agreed on basic terms that will give Fox the rights to around 25 football games and 50 basketball games that it will carry on both the broadcast channel and FS1 starting in the fall of '17. The deal runs six years and could cost Fox as much as $250M per year, depending on the amount of rights the Big Ten conference puts in its second package.

http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Daily/Closing-Bell/2016/04/19/Big-Ten.aspx
 
#2      
Obviously tough to conclude too much with the exact rights and dollar figures up in the air, but the fact that an ESPN bid was "non-competitive" tells you something.

Also, from the day Fox and Jim Delany went on their first date with the BTN, the relationship has gotten ever closer to walking down the aisle. This might be that moment.

EDIT: The deal is only for six years. That tells you something too. ESPN sees the cable paradigm as over. Fox sees it clinging to life for a few more years. Everyone knows its condition is terminal. Bad news for Cubs fans, FWIW.

And if there is anything good and holy in the world, this will be the end of 11AM football in the Big Ten. :pray:
 
Last edited by a moderator:
#6      
Obviously tough to conclude too much with the exact rights and dollar figures up in the air, but the fact that an ESPN bid was "non-competitive" tells you something.

EDIT: The deal is only for six years. That tells you something too. ESPN sees the cable paradigm as over. Fox sees it clinging to life for a few more years. Everyone knows its condition is terminal. Bad news for Cubs fans, FWIW.

What is tells you is that ESPN bet on it being non-competitive and lost -- just like when they bet that the Big Ten wouldn't start its own network -- and lost.

Now, they will have to bid against all the other networks for the remaining B1G 1st-tier rights or get shut out.
 
#7      
What is tells you is that ESPN bet on it being non-competitive and lost -- just like when they bet that the Big Ten wouldn't start its own network -- and lost.

No, ESPN is under a cost-cutting mandate from Disney and is losing stuff all over the place. They don't see a future as a bloated middleman in the cable fees game and they're probably right.

Fox for its part is trying to compete with ESPN in whatever form ESPN will take, and they are way behind in content. So this makes a certain degree of sense.
 
#9      
No, ESPN is under a cost-cutting mandate from Disney and is losing stuff all over the place. They don't see a future as a bloated middleman in the cable fees game and they're probably right.

Fox for its part is trying to compete with ESPN in whatever form ESPN will take, and they are way behind in content. So this makes a certain degree of sense.

ESPN won't lose the Big Ten. Can't afford to.
 
#10      

Hoppy2105

Little Rock, Arkansas
So...my only question is:

Will there still be a BTN? And simply all of our "prime time" games will be on fox now instead of ESPN?

Full disclosure: I'm almost 100% ignorant of this type of stuff.
 
#11      
So...my only question is:

Will there still be a BTN? And simply all of our "prime time" games will be on fox now instead of ESPN?

Full disclosure: I'm almost 100% ignorant of this type of stuff.

Yes, the BTN will continue along the same way. This deal covers the games that are currently on the ESPN networks as well as the handful of basketball games that are on CBS. Quite which or how many of those games now belong to Fox is unclear.

Worth noting of course that Fox already had the rights to the Big Ten Championship football game.
 
#12      
Obviously tough to conclude too much with the exact rights and dollar figures up in the air, but the fact that an ESPN bid was "non-competitive" tells you something.

Also, from the day Fox and Jim Delany went on their first date with the BTN, the relationship has gotten ever closer to walking down the aisle. This might be that moment.

EDIT: The deal is only for six years. That tells you something too. ESPN sees the cable paradigm as over. Fox sees it clinging to life for a few more years. Everyone knows its condition is terminal. Bad news for Cubs fans, FWIW.

And if there is anything good and holy in the world, this will be the end of 11AM football in the Big Ten. :pray:



Good deal. Delaney is a very astute businessman who the B1G is lucky to have.

But I like the conference keeping one 11 am game per week --- and I'd like it to be for the very worst game of the week. I like the idea of putting a little pressure on the bottom feeders to earn their way consistently out of such a time slot rather than giving all programs the full benefits of a new TV set up.
 
Last edited:
#13      
But I like the conference keeping one 11 am game per week --- and I'd like it to be for the very worst game of the week. I like the idea of putting a little pressure on the bottom feeders to earn their way consistently out of such a time slot rather than giving all programs the full benefits of a new TV set up.

Whether under that Randian fever dream of a rationale or just sheer lack of airtime there are always going to be different timeslots and the more attractive games will be put in the better ones. But except for the big three broadcast networks that have to hit timeslots for their affiliates evening newscasts, there is no reason for anyone to broadcast a game in the 11AM slot.

They should do a 12:30/4:00/7:30 tripleheader on FS1, FOX, and the BTN.
 
#14      

trevdv

Champaign
They should do a 12:30/4:00/7:30 tripleheader on FS1, FOX, and the BTN.

I'd be down for that idea. I think that could be a very popular format for fans looking for other games at non-traditional start times. But yeah, BTN is owned by Fox, so this deal is about those Sunday afternoon basketball games on CBS, those Saturday morning football games on ESPN2, etc. Nothing will happen to BTN's volume of games.
 
#15      
I think that could be a very popular format for fans looking for other games at non-traditional start times.

Bingo.

CBS clung to the idea of protecting clean windows for NCAA tournament games for years and years and years, but now that they have opened it up with staggered start times (not to mention putting all the games on different networks with free live streaming) the overall audience is way, way up.
 
#18      

First, though, let’s break down the numbers. If Ourand’s reporting is accurate, the Big Ten will sell half of its rights package to Fox for up to $250 million per year — which would divide out to a cool $17.86 million per school. And that’s with the other half still up for bid to ESPN, CBS, NBC or whomever.

We’ll see where the final numbers come out, but it seems almost certain that Big Ten schools will soon be banking more than $30 million per year — a number that doesn’t even include what the conference makes off the Big Ten Network and digital rights. When it’s all said and done, it could be a $40 million distribution.

jump-to-conclusions-mat.jpg
 
#19      
Whether under that Randian fever dream of a rationale or just sheer lack of airtime there are always going to be different timeslots and the more attractive games will be put in the better ones. But except for the big three broadcast networks that have to hit timeslots for their affiliates evening newscasts, there is no reason for anyone to broadcast a game in the 11AM slot.

They should do a 12:30/4:00/7:30 tripleheader on FS1, FOX, and the BTN.

I'd be surprised to see no 11 am starts this year ... Just too many really bad power 5 teams out there (including most of the bottom half of the B1G) that very few people out of their immediate small fan bases want to see.

But then again $$$ talks whether it's sensible or not.
 
#20      

trevdv

Champaign
I'd be surprised to see no 11 am starts this year ... Just too many really bad power 5 teams out there (including most of the bottom half of the B1G) that very few people out of their immediate small fan bases want to see.

But then again $$$ talks whether it's sensible or not.

FS1 had Big 12 games on for 11am starts last season. I suppose they could input some B1G games into that lineup too. Some of those Rutgers-Minnesota matchups that no one wants to watch.
 
#22      
How would that work with respect to time zone difference (1/2 the teams in Eastern and 1/2 in Central)? For example, if this years Ill @ Rutgers game were in the first slot.

All of those times Central, so an hour later Eastern.

The occasional 8:30 kickoff wouldn't be the end of the world.

Of course, you could also blow the whole thing up and stagger the start times, that would be best of all perhaps.

Let's make up a week of Big Ten games:

12:30 PM CT (FS1): Illinois at Indiana
1:00 PM CT (BTN - Regional Coverage): Purdue at Rutgers
1:30 PM CT (BTN - Regional Coverage): Minnesota at Northwestern
2:30 PM CT (FOX): Michigan State at Michigan
4:00 PM CT (FS1): Iowa at Wisconsin
5:00 PM CT (BTN): Nebraska at Iowa
6:30 PM CT (FOX): Ohio State at Penn State

Who is not glued to the TV all day Saturday if something like that is going on every week? During the non-conference portion of the season there are way more games so you would likely have to stack them on the BTN overflows somewhere, but we're doing that now anyway.

And you can juggle that to make room for a late night Pac12 game on FOX or FS1 or fit in a Big XII game somewhere or whatever.
 
#23      
Obviously tough to conclude too much with the exact rights and dollar figures up in the air, but the fact that an ESPN bid was "non-competitive" tells you something.

EDIT: The deal is only for six years. That tells you something too. ESPN sees the cable paradigm as over. Fox sees it clinging to life for a few more years. Everyone knows its condition is terminal. Bad news for Cubs fans, FWIW

Not sure how much you can read into ESPN... it is hard to decipher numbers with content up in the air...but no matter how you slice it is huge increase over contract 10 yrs ago

"S1 starting in the fall of '17. The deal runs six years and could cost Fox as much as $250M per year, depending on the amount of rights the Big Ten conference puts in its second package.

The Fox deal essentially is half of the package of games that had been with ESPN (as part of a 10-year, $1B deal that expires next spring) and CBS (as part of a 6-year, $72M basketball-only deal that also expires next spring)."


So Fox is paying 1.5 B over the next 6 years( with more content to sell)....vs ESPN paying 1 B for the last 10 (& CBS is noise on that number), so this is a big increase.

So it looks to me like it could be just as likely Fox is hungry for content as ESPN is cost cutting, especially with maybe 1/2 the content still available.
 
#24      
More speculation on the ridiculous money coming our way.

These are projections, and the exact figures for the Big Ten Network are still unknown, but given what we know now, and what the Big Ten’s full first-tier rights package is expected to look like, we can comfortably say that the conference will be making far more than the previous projection of $44.5 million per school.

At the very worst — assuming BTN profits don’t grow, which is incredibly unlikely — the Big Ten should be able to distribute roughly $47 million per school in 2017-18, just from media rights alone. That’s double what it distributed in 2015, and more than previous projections for the entire distribution once this new deal hit.

It’s very possible that by 2017-18, the Big Ten could be distributing $60 million total per school. That’s almost double the $32 million that each school received in 2015. It’s also over $40 million more than Big Ten schools were receiving just a decade ago.

Awful Announcing