Well the news conference to announce it was “exclusive” ESPN360 content, so I didn’t see it. Here’s the media release from the Big East.
For football.
A minimum of 17 home games involving BIG EAST Conference teams will be televised on ABC, ESPN or ESPN2, including four Thursday night games and two Sunday night games on ESPN or ESPN2. In fact, this commitment represents the largest number of guaranteed appearances on ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 in the history of BIG EAST Conference football.
At least one conference game will be a part of ESPN’s Saturday Prime Time package and two games – one on ABC or ESPN, the other on ESPN2 – will be on Championship Saturday in December.
In addition, ESPN Regional, the nation’s largest football regional network reaching more than 30 million homes, will broadcast nine games and will continue its Game of the Week package, which is syndicated throughout BIG EAST markets and beyond. Most games produced by ERT are also offered as part of the ESPN GamePlan pay subscription service.
Finally, the conference will also have a minimum of five home contests televised by ESPNU. The minimum number of football games involving BIG EAST teams on television increases further when taking into account appearances in non-conference away contests.
Now for basketball.
The BIG EAST will continue to be the only conference in the country to have each and every one of its men’s basketball tournament games televised by ESPN. There were record audiences for the 2006 BIG EAST Championship, including the final game, which was the highest-rated cable tournament final of the year (2.58).
In addition, ESPN Regional will carry a minimum of 80 games (66 conference and 14 home non-conference) and continue its weekend Game of the Week package, which reaches approximately 30 percent of the nation’s homes and has a total household reach of more than 30 million. Most games offered by ERT are also available nationally as part of ESPN Full Court, the pay subscription college basketball outer-market service.
…
Minimum 60 games on ESPN or ESPN2
- 49 regular season games – 41 conference and eight home non-conference
- 11 BIG EAST Championship games
110 additional regular season games broadcast on the remaining ESPN platforms
- 80 games on ESPN Regional (66 conference and 14 home non-conference)
- 30 conference games on ESPNU/ESPN360
Minimum of 10 conference or non-conference games on CBSThe above gives the BIG EAST a minimum grand total of 180 television games each year. The BIG EAST will continue to be featured each week during the conference season on ESPN’s Big Monday. A new element to the agreement will allow ESPN to also feature a BIG EAST Conference match up on Thursday each week. The agreement also provides that each BIG EAST team have a minimum of 10 games telecast on ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Classic or ERT.
Short-term (the next couple of years) very good for the Big East and its members. The money will be nice. Long-term, it puts the BE schools further behind the other schools in terms of growing revenue streams and control.
The agreement will also cover content to be provided on broadband and cellular services.
And guess who has the control?
The new contract extensions give ESPN, which is on the cutting edge of new media technology, the right to distribute its BIG EAST inventory on any new potential consumer-based platforms. “We will be on the crest of the wave of the future,” Tranghese said. “The BIG EAST is proud to allow ESPN to explore new ways to give the Conference even more national exposure through innovative technology.”
Thanks for giving that property away in this contract. ESPN controls the rights, content and control over the most important long-term media area.
That’s where the big growth areas and new revenue streams are. I know some of you think I’m being ridiculous about this, and my notes that Mountain West premiere’s its channel this week and that the SEC is planning its own cable channel along with the Big 11 in the next couple of years.
I asked this question back in June when the BE deal was first leaked.
It’s a real concern to me that this conference seems to lack any foresight or desire to try and see what is coming. All it seems to do is react and get into a defensive stance.
This next TV deal is supposed to be for a lot of money, and that’s great. But does it consider the distribution of content in other ways? Does it take into account possible broadband video and audio distribution, podcasts and whatever else is next? Or did it all get left in a vague terms that would require a lawsuit later to resolve actual ownership, distribution, fee rights and such?
At least part of it was answered. It’s not vague at all. Disney gets it all.
Pitt’s running into that now with its “Panther Access.” They are expecting $70/year subscriptions for people to get Internet radio broadcasts for football and basketball? ESPN won’t be giving away the internet TV rights to those things. They have their full court and gameplan packages to sell. But the SEC, Big 11 and Mountain West will all be able to do that. They’ll be able to offer conference and team packages for seasons online. They’ll be able to offer a download to watch the game later — an online TiVo.
Hell, guess what? The Big Sky conference is already doing it online. That’s right, the Big frickin’ Sky conference.
This season, the entire nine-school Big Sky Conference will webcast all football, basketball and volleyball games, using technology from Salt Lake City-based SportsCast Network LLC.
Fans will be able to choose which team’s audio feed to which to listen. Games will be archived and can be downloaded to portable devices like Apple Computer Inc.’s iPod.
“This is the future,” Big Sky Commissioner Doug Fullerton said. “The fan will decide what they are going to watch and when they are going to watch it.”
Northern Arizona does TV broadcast of its games online, and the rest of the conference is following suit. The Ivy league is also doing it.
“We can produce our own television and reach, literally, the entire world on the Web, without having to go through the issues of, is there cable availability? Is there satellite availability? Is there advertising support?” said Jeff Orleans, commissioner of the Ivy League.
He expects most of the league’s sporting events will be online within seven years.
Seven years. Remarkable coincidence. That’s how long the BE contract with ESPN runs.
You know the ACC and Big 12 have been paying attention to these movements. They have their contracts coming up and they will follow suit.
By the time the BE contract comes up for renewal, all the other schools will already have established their channels and their broadband outlets. The BE, once again, will be reacting and playing catch-up.
For those of you who are thinking that the good thing is that the BE will become that much more important to ESPN and more games will be shown on the mouse family, no. They still have their TV deals and will show plenty of games. That’s why the BE will only have 17 games aired, with only a few guaranteed for non-weekdays. Not an encouraging sign.
It’s just that the other conferences will have more control over their content and the revenue from it. The BE football will continue to be used like the Mountain West was to fill programming on the weeknights.
Beaming Up the Big Ten Channel
For the long-term, the strongest conferences are going to have a mix of having its marquee games (i.e. Michigan vs. Ohio State football) on the traditional networks for widespread exposure while maximizing its revenue for its lower tier games by retaining control over them. IMHO, the Big East will need to move this model if it wants to keep up with the other BCS conferences.
HbgFrank
Disclosing myself as a complete Big Ten fan as an Illinois alum (but also a DePaul fan since I went to grad school there), I’ll have to disagree with you on the revenue standpoint. The New York Times pegged the Big Ten’s deal with ABC/ESPN at 10 years for $100 million per year, which I believe has to include both football and basketball (if it’s just football, that would be unbelievable). This is in addition to the separate basketball contract that the Big Ten has with CBS and the $7.5 million per year per school ($82.5 millions total) that the Big Ten is anticipating with the Big Ten Channel.
Meanwhile, the New York Daily News stated that the total Big East contract for both football and basketball would be “slightly less” than the 7-year, $258 million deal that the ACC signed with ESPN in 2004 (which is a bit misleading since that cited ACC deal only covered football). I’m not sure how this breaks down between basketball and football, but by using the Daily News comparison, the Big East is going to get around $35 million per year for both football and basketball. I’m not sure how much is allocated to football versus basketball, but compared to the $100 million per year the Big Ten is getting from ABC/ESPN plus $82.5 million from the Big Ten Channel and then adding on whatever CBS is paying for basketball (all of this with 5 fewer teams than the Big East on the basketball side), I highly doubt the Big East is getting more money than the Big Ten for basketball.
I don’t want to see college games go the PPV more than anyone else, but it has to be emphasized again that the Big Ten has increased its exposure on ABC, ESPN, and CBS with its new deals in addition to the new revenue stream of the Big Ten Channel. When you look at the numbers closely, the Big Ten is getting 17 football games on ABC alone and an additional 24 games on ESPN/ESPN2 versus the 17 Big East games on ABC/ESPN/ESPN2. On the basketball side, if you look at ESPN’s press release on the Big East deal (as opposed to the conference’s press release), you’ll see that ESPN/ESPN2 plans on carrying approximately 40 intra-conference regular season games, which is right in line with the minimum of 43 Big Ten conference games that those networks are going to carry (and, once again, remember that the Big Ten has 5 fewer BB members and the Big East will have 2 more conference games per team starting next year).
I’m not trying to be a Big Ten troll here, but I do want to dispel the notion that I’ve heard from a lot of Big East fans that the Big Ten is somehow leaving ABC and ESPN. As you can see by the numbers, it’s completely the opposite. The Big Ten Channel is on top of all of that. Think of the Big Ten as following the models of the NFL and the New York Yankees – all of those entities are going to continue to be staples on the national networks, but there’s also a whole lot of money to be made by taking a portion of such programming in-house. The Big Ten is going to be anything but a middleman – it’s going to own its own channel along with all of the subscriber revenues that come with it.
As a follow-up, the Big Ten Channel will be carried on the Total Choice tier (the equivalent of basic cable) on DirecTV nationwide as opposed to being a subscription channel or even a “Sports Tier” channel like ESPNU or CSTV, so the network is getting maximum national exposure on the dish. For cable, what will probably happen is that the Big Ten Channel will be carried on basic cable in its home markets and then offered as a Sports Tier channel in other areas. Once again, that’s an excellent deal considering that these are the former ESPN Plus games.
