If there is one story to read, this SBJ article on how Fox and ESPN teamed up to give the Pac-12 their huge deal, and keep NBC/Comcast out of the game.
Prior to that call, executives from ESPN and Fox were resigned to losing the Pac-10’s media rights to Comcast, which had told the conference weeks earlier that it would bid $225 million per year to pick up the rights for Versus and NBC. Neither of the current partners, ESPN nor Fox, had the shelf space to bid that much individually.
In early April, NBC Sports executives, led by Chairman Dick Ebersol, gave a presentation in New York, according to conference sources. Pac-10 officials left the meeting believing that Comcast viewed the Pac-10 as an important piece of its plans to build NBC Sports and Versus. Steve Burke, CEO of NBC Universal, also was present to meet and greet Pac-10 executives, but he left before the meeting started.
Despite the strong bid, the conference recognized its long relationship with the two incumbents. The Pac-10’s media consultant, Evolution Media’s Chris Bevilacqua, proposed an idea to Skipper: What if the two media giants joined forces and combined their bid?
The intrigue of that, and the concerted effort by the Mouse Monopoly and House of Murdoch to work together on keeping NBC/Comcast out of the picture is astounding. Beyond giving the Pac-12 control and content to have their own network on top of this, the Pac-12 also retained all digital rights to their games. That’s huge for inventory and future packaging.
But there is a lot more to this story , and bodes well (hopefully) for the Big East.
