Big Ten's B1G New TV Deal

“The price of poker has increased.”

That was Ed Desser’s reaction to the news that the Big Ten has signed a new media rights deal with Fox, CBS, NBC and Peacock to air Big Ten football games starting in 2024. The new deal is worth more than a billion dollars a year.

“In the context of the NFL being worth $11 billion a year,” said Desser. “This seems like a veritable bargain for a lot more content in one of the two best college conferences.”

Desser has negotiated media rights deals himself as the President of NBA TV. He has since become a consultant for sports entities doing their own deals, including doing work for the Big 12.

“We continue to see sports as being one of the last bastions of content that is vital for linear networks to sustain themselves,” explained Desser when questioned about the size of the deal. “As viewership for virtually every other kind of programming has become miniscule, sports is one of the last remaining genres that is able to attract large audiences for appointment viewing. That has real value.”

Brett McMurphy with the Action Network is reporting that the new deal includes an escalator clause which could bump up the value of the deal from $7-$8 billion dollars to $10 billion if the Big Ten expands even more.

You may recall that it was McMurphy who exposed scandals associated with Zach Smith, the former Ohio State assistant coach and Tom Herman fan. Those scandals set off a series of events which led to Urban Meyer stepping down.

Sources tell McMurphy that the conference “is not done” expanding and has its eyes set on Notre Dame, Oregon, Washington, Stanford and Cal. Those same sources say the conference wants to expand West whether Notre Dame comes on board or not.

There may be a political motive for the B1G to continue its westward expansion as well. The University of California Board of Regents met Wednesday night to discuss UCLA’s move to the Big Ten and the financial impact that could have on Cal.

The Regents acknowledged that while UCLA Chancellor Gene Block had the authority to make the move to the Big Ten.

However, Charlie Robinson, the general counsel for the UC Office of the President, told the school Chancellor works for them and the regents have the power to revoke that authority.

“The regents could say ‘We want to act and therefore we do not want the president or the chancellors to act in this area,’ and simply assert that,” Robinson said.

Given that power, the UC regents could revoke UCLA’s move to the Big Ten.

Of course, pulling UCLA out of a massive new media rights contract, which the school agreed to, would probably trigger a big, expensive court battle.

But what wouldn’t trigger a court battle is if the regents require UCLA to spend some of this B1G new pile of cash to subsidize Cal’s athletics budget.

All of that could become a moot point if Cal is included in a Big Ten expansion.

Desser played down news of the Big Ten’s escalator clause when I asked him about it.

“I don't think we can read too much into that information,” said Desser. “Those sorts of provisions are not uncommon and when you have the kind of leverage that the Big 10 has, you can get all kinds of things included in your deal.”

He also believes that the Fox’s decision to pay B1G dollars for the Big Ten could be good news for the Pac-12, which is engaged in its own media rights negotiations right now.

"What this signals to me is that the Pac-12 is now somewhat more important to ESPN then it was before these deals were made,” said Desser. “You could probably say the same of the of the Big 12."

The Pac-12 needs to score a big new deal of its own if it hopes to be able to keep its conference members from jumping ship to the Big Ten. Even then, it may not be enough.

The Pac-12’s biggest problem is that there may not be much competition for its tier one media rights outside of ESPN. Fox Sports appears to be saving its Pac-12 money to give it to the Big Ten in case it expands. CBS and NBC probably don’t have the broadcast windows to show many more games beyond what they just secured with the Big Ten deal. Sure they have Peacock and Paramount Plus streaming options, but they aren’t going to put tier one programming on those outlets…at least not at this time.

So who is going to compete with ESPN to drive up the Pac-12’s price?

One thing the Pac-12 does have going for it, that ESPN values, is the late night window of football games. The Pac-12 After Dark games draw pretty good ratings for ESPN at a time when the west coast is in primetime but the east coast is asleep so there is little to no competition for college football fans to change the channel.

The flip side of that equation is true too. The Pac-12 can not offer games before 2:00 or 3:00 pm (ET). ESPN needs strong programming to go up against Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff games. Yes, it does have the SEC, but the best SEC games will be later in the afternoon and in the primetime window. That leaves the Big 12 as the most likely beneficiary.

The Big 12’s media deal will expire in 2025 and those negotiations will begin soon.

Will ESPN want to spend a lot of money on the Pac-12 and stretch its budget before the Big 12’s deal is set? That seems dicey when you consider that the Pac-12 could dissolve if Oregon, Washington, Cal and Stanford all jump to the Big Ten.

It might be in ESPN’s financial interest to gently nudge some of the Pac-12 schools to go to the Big 12 instead (*cough* Colorado, Utah, Arizona and Arizona State *cough*).

Reportedly the Pac-12 schools don’t want to abandon the conference. I get it. These schools have been together for a century. Everyone associated with them have grown up on the Pac-12 not just being relevant, but a major player in the college sporting world. But it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there and those schools risk being left behind if they don’t take the big money offers when they come.

And ESPN isn’t going to pay above market prices just because we all have fond memories of the Pac-12 that once was.

"I don't think that these entities, pay money out of the goodness of their hearts to maintain the historic structure of college sports, that seems a little bit like a fairy tale,” said Desser. “They pay what the market requires them to pay in order to have the content that they think is important for them to compete in the marketplace, to have an attractive package for advertisers and to have programming that is important enough that distributors are willing to pay fairly handsome per subscriber fees for their platform. That's the business, that hasn't changed.”