Pac-12 agrees to new TV "mega" deal with ESPN/FOX
Damn, these deals are just exploding:
The Pac-10 has agreed to a 12-year television contract with ESPN and Fox that will more than triple its media rights fees and be the most valuable for any conference in college sports.
The contract, which will begin with the 2012-13 season, will be worth more than $225 million per year -- or $2.7 billion over the life of the deal, Sports Business Daily and The Associated Press reported on Tuesday.
The Pac-10 made less than $60 million in media rights this past season but became the latest conference to take advantage of the escalating market for college sports on television.
The ACC recently signed a deal for $155 million a year and the Big 12 reached a deal with Fox that made its total annual package worth about $130 million. The Pac-10, which will be renamed the Pac-12 in July with the additions of Utah and Colorado, topped those deals, as well as the $205 million the SEC gets and the $220 million paid to the Big Ten.
is still a very different approach than anyone's. The concept of the entire programming schedule being about the B1G schools is still very unique.
I would bet that even IU, NW and Minnesota talk to their recruits about the TV exposure the B1G Network provides. Try to tell that to a Vanderbilt football recruit ... sorry the SEC contract rewards the elite and does very little for the lower tier teams.
I know when the B1G Network started, there were many fans that thought it was worthless. I doubt many B1G fans feel that way now. I'm always flipping by (in the off-season) just to see what might be on. I still think its a great concept ... and still unmatched by any other conference.
Go Blue !
will force them to add more HD channels like FSD does for big games. It was obnoxious when a game you wanted to see was "secondary" in your market and all you got was the standard definition version.
I find it hard to believe that anybody is still putting stuff on in SD these days. HD is standard, and I think it has something better than 70% saturation. It doesn't cost any more to broadcast in HD, does it? I'm not sure what the business model is for ESPN, but they must somehow get a better deal from the cable companies if they put some games on SD rather than HD. The Stanford-USC game is the one I can think of last year that was inexplicably on ESPN2 SD.