Per Sports Business Journal, still a opening for ESPN to get a small package of games
Big Ten officially agrees to new media deals with CBS, FOX, NBC
by Michael Smith, Sports Business Journal
The Big Ten has finalized media contracts with CBS, FOX and NBC that will total more than $8 billion over seven years, making it the most lucrative conference rights deal in the history of college athletics. The three deals combined will pay the conference over $1.1 billion per year and put the Big Ten's schools well ahead of their peers in revenue.
The conference in its previous media rights deals with FOX and ESPN was making $440 million per year, meaning the new deals will provide the Big Ten with nearly a three-times increase starting with the 2023-24 season and going through the 2029-30 fiscal year.
FOX has the premier package with 30-plus football games, while CBS and NBC will have 15-16 games each.
The most notable absence in this set of deals is ESPN, which had a 40-year relationship with the Big Ten, but couldn’t come to terms with the conference during the most recent negotiations. ESPN’s current rights with the Big Ten go through 2022-23, however sources indicated there’s a possibility that talks could re-open to bring ESPN back to the table for a smaller package of games than what they originally negotiated.
Even without ESPN, the Big Ten’s new set of partners will provide a powerhouse lineup of college football on Saturdays in the fall. It will start with FOX’s “Big Noon Saturday” at noon ET, followed by CBS’ 3:30 p.m. window and NBC’s new “Big Ten Saturday Night” game in prime time.
The FOX-CBS-NBC triumvirate will provide the Big Ten with an NFL-like lineup of games on over-the-air TV.
“The goal was to own each of these windows,” said Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren, the former Vikings COO who used the NFL as a model for the Big Ten’s own rights negotiations. “To capture the hearts and minds and the fan avidity, I think you’ve got to make it very simple for your fans. So, I always had this visual, especially coming out of the NFL, that we’d have partners in each one of those windows. And then we’d have some special events, like two games on Black Friday.”
FS1 and Big Ten Network also will carry a heavy dose of college football across its airwaves.
Big Ten schools will benefit financially from the rights fees increases, but not right away. The conference has paid out right around $50 million per school under its current terms. That per-school average is not expected to change much in 2022-2023, the final year of the current deal.
Key Power FIve media-rights deals
Property | Media Partner(s) | Years | Expires | Total | Average Value |
Big Ten (starts 2023) | FOX/NBC/CBS | 7 | 2030 | $8.05 billion | $1.15 billion |
College Football Playoff | ESPN | 12 | 2025-26 | $7.3 billion | $608.33 million |
SEC (starts 2024) | ESPN | 10 | 2034 | $3 billion | $300 million |
Pac-12 | FOX/ESPN | 12 | 2024 | $3 billion | $250 million |
Big Ten | FOX | 6 | 2023 | $2.64 billion | $250 million |
ACC | ESPN | 20 | 2036 | $4.8 billlion | $240 million |
Big 12 | FOX/ESPN | 13 | 2025 | $2.6 billion | $200 million |
Big Ten | ESPN | 6 | 2023 | $1.14 billion | $190 million |
SEC | CBS | 15 | 2023 | $825 million | $55 million |
Notre Dame (football) | NBC | 10 | 2025 | $150 million | $15 million |
Big Ten (basketball) | CBS | 6 | 2023 | $60 million | $10 million |
The first few years of the new deal, which kicks in during the 2023-24 year, has a slight slope, meaning revenues will increase gradually. Like many media rights deals that are backloaded like this one, the more drastic increases are in the second half of the deal.
With annual revenue reaching more than $1.1 billion, divided by 16 schools, including new additions USC and UCLAbia in 2024, the per-school payouts could reach $70 million or more.
That’s well ahead of the other member of the Power Two in college athletics, the SEC, which distributed $55 million per school in fiscal 2021. The SEC also has an extended rights deal with ESPN for $300 million a year that will begin after the 2023 football season.
In addition to the football lineup, Warren added some pieces to the deals, like putting the women’s basketball tournament championship on CBS for the first time.
“That’s big,” Warren said.
NBCUniversal’s direct-to-consumer product, Peacock, will be the conference’s streaming home. NBC’s Saturday night games will simul-stream on Peacock and the service will have its own selection of eight games as well.
The conference will conduct a draft among the three networks to determine who gets which games.
Among the other unique elements in these deals, NBC has committed to a $100,000 advertising budget with each conference school to promote their academic missions. Warren said it’s similar to Notre Dame’s “What would you fight for?” two-minute video series that runs on NBC during the Fighting Irish’s football games.
The chief complication the Big Ten had to work through with CBS was its contractual commitment to the SEC for 3:30 p.m. games during the 2022 and 2023 seasons, meaning there is a one-year of overlap for CBS between the two leagues in 2023.
CBS will fulfill its SEC contract in 2023 before shifting over to the Big Ten in that window in 2024.
“That 3:30 window is the best showcase in college football,” CBS Sports Chair Sean McManus said.
That juggling will leave CBS with a reduced package of seven Big Ten games for the 2023 season, compared to 14-15 games in subsequent seasons.
Those Big Ten games on CBS mostly will be games early in the season before its SEC schedule begins.
CBS’s presentation of Big Ten games will look and sound like its SEC games, from the announcers to the music and overall production. Warren said the long-term benefit of having CBS as a partner was easily worth navigating the short-term conflict.
“I made up my mind early on that I was not going to put CBS in a position where they had to say no because they had to break the SEC contract,” Warren said. “That wasn’t the right thing to do. So, we just had to get creative. You’ve got a partner you’re excited about and you don’t want to lose that, so they’re going to have half of a package in that first year.”
NBC’s football inventory will be 16 games per season in prime time.
Fox’s package will range from 24-27 games in 2023 to 30-32 games through the 2029 season. The network is coming off a banner season in which its “Big Noon Saturday” time slot was the most-watched window in all of college football with an average audience of 5.7 million viewers.
Fox, which has a deeper relationship with the Big Ten than other networks, has been in business with the conference since 2007 when they teamed up to form the Big Ten Network. Fox owns 61% of BTN now and Fox will take the majority of the football and men’s basketball inventory as part of their new agreement.
Each of the three networks will have a Big Ten football championship game — Fox will have four, CBS two and NBC one.
NBC’s lineup on linear TV will tout Notre Dame in a 3:30 p.m. window, followed by the Big Ten game on Saturday night, providing the network with a hefty 1-2 college football punch.
NBC’s longstanding relationship with Notre Dame also could create more matchups between the Fighting Irish and Big Ten schools, like Michigan, which has fallen off Notre Dame’s schedule in recent years. The two rivals have played just twice since 2014 and aren’t scheduled to play again until 2033.
NBC might be in a better position to facilitate some of those games, depending on how aggressive the Irish want to schedule in the future.
“To be able to create this lineup of games on linear channels — the word that comes to mind is home run,” said former Fox Sports President Bob Thompson, who now runs a media consultancy. “It’s like the anti-streamer package.
“This is huge for all of these local stations. Then you’ve got the ability to promote and cross-promote these games across the channels.
“When you think about who the competitors will be to bid on the College Football Playoff, it used to be just ESPN and Fox. Now, with NBC a player and CBS still involved, who knows if they might go shopping for something else.”
The Big Ten’s negotiations, which began soon after Warren arrived in 2019, finally ran its course last week when the commissioner made his presentation to the conference’s presidents and chancellors and athletic directors. They voted to approve last Friday.
“We are proud to expand upon our long-standing partnership with the Big Ten and further bolster our position as the premier rights holder of the conference,” said Fox Sports CEO Eric Shanks. “Commissioner Warren’s leadership and vision have resulted in the growth and recent market expansion of the Big Ten. In an ever-evolving landscape, the Big Ten remains the most storied collegiate athletic conference in the country.”
"Working with Kevin Warren and his team on this deal was rewarding on both a personal and professional level," said NBC Sports Chair Pete Bevacqua in a statement through the network. "We are all excited to be partners with Kevin and the Big Ten Conference for these upcoming seven years, and hopefully, well beyond."
Warren, whose background in the NFL exposed him to some pretty complicated deals, such as construction of U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, called the Big Ten’s talks “the most complex I’ve ever worked on. It was a combination of working with multiple parties and just the marketplace we’re in now, with everything going on in college athletics. Over the course of negotiations, the Big Ten had to put things on hold because USC and UCLAbia applied to become members.
“We had already put expansion in the term sheets when USC and UCLAbia came along,” Warren said. “We had been talking about expansion since I was hired in 2019. … But it truly was seven, eight, nine, 10 dimensional chess at all times. It was demanding spiritually, emotionally, physically and mentally. Starting around the first of this year, there was something to do literally every day on this.”
Unlike most other commissioners, Warren didn’t use a traditional media consultant. Instead, he relied on his legal background and a team of internal experts: Senior Vice President, Television, Kerry Kenny; General Counsel Anil Gollahalli; Deputy General Counsel Adam Neuman; Deputy Commissioner Diana Sabau; and CFO Laura Anderson.
Warren was comfortable with the staff he has built in the Big Ten’s front office, not to mention the hundreds of thousands, maybe more, the conference saved by not hiring a consultant.
Another media expert, Len DeLuca, the former CBS, IMG and ESPN executive who now teaches at New York University’s Stern College of Business, said the Big Ten benefitted from three major factors: the evolution of these mega-deals in college athletics; the structure of the deals that put games on over-the-air TV; and perhaps most importantly, timing. NBC and CBS both found themselves with needs and resources at a time when college football is flourishing.
“This was inevitable,” DeLuca said. “This is the evolutionary process of college football reaching its next level. … The surprising piece for me has been NBC and the fact that they’ve been this active.”
While the Big Ten did not hire a media expert in the traditional sense, Warren did lean on two consultants at times in the negotiations -- Proskauer’s Joe Leccese and Endeavor’s Karen Brodkin.