top of page
Search
kitusof1984

Big Ten TV Network: The First Internationally Distributed Network Dedicated to Covering the B1G Conf



The Big Ten Conference launched the Big Ten Network (BTN) almost 6 years ago. As conference TV network trailblazers, they were able to maintain profitable distribution for some of their marquee football and basketball matchups with ESPN, FOX and CBS, while utilizing the network inventory to give fans access to the rest of the football and basketball games. (During fall Saturdays at our house, BTN is on from morning til night. Go Cats!) At the same time, BTN had an opportunity showcase an unprecedented amount of Olympic sports, like soccer, gymnastics and volleyball.


In addition, the Big Ten Conference saw an opportunity to create programming on their network that was more than just sports, highlighting the roles its universities play in teaching and preparing ALL of its students (the ones who wear the uniform as well as those who do not) for a life of significance.




big ten t v net work



Skipper then noted that the first TV deal he worked on was with the Big Ten. The conference pushed back for a large increase in rights fees, which caused ESPN to balk. That caused then-Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany to begin the process of what would become the Big Ten Network, something that Skipper seems to regret letting happen.


The Big Ten Network led to the Pac-12 Network which led to the SEC Network, ACC Network, and so on. And now, a lot of college sports content has been piecemealed to specific services and broadcasters where audiences have to pay more in order to get access to all of it, assuming those specific networks have deals with your specific cable provider. Skipper sees an eventual shift back to the traditional cable model when viewers get tired of scrambling to find the games they want to watch.


The advent of conference networks and new television rights deals have led to skyrocketing revenues for athletic programs and universities this decade. And those revenue distributions coming to power conference schools keep rising with seemingly no end in sight.


After receiving $36 million in 2017, Michigan received a $51.1 million payout in 2018 from the conference largely thanks to a huge rights deal with ESPN and Fox and the success of the Big Ten Network. The number will increase to $52.1 million for the 2019 fiscal year.


PHILADELPHIA (CBS/AP) -- The Big Ten's new $7 billion media rights deal will string the conference's top football games across three major networks each week, creating an NFL-style television schedule on Saturdays.


The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because Big Ten and network officials were not disclosing financial details publicly, but the deal is believed to be the richest ever on an annual basis for a college sports property. The large increase in revenue to the conference won't kick in until the third year of the deal and gradually will increase over the final five years.


"The economics of that alone are rather large," Thompson said. "If you get 3 million people all of sudden get the Big Ten network as part of their expanded basic (cable package), that's $3 million a month. Compared to what they had been getting which is like $3 million a year."


CBS will carry 14-15 Big Ten football games a season from 2024-29, including a Black Friday game. Unlike with its longtime SEC deal, CBS will not be guaranteed the first selection of football games each week with the Big Ten. Fox, CBS and NBC will hold a draft for games, allowing each network some opportunities for first selection in a given week.


In 2023, CBS will carry seven Big Ten games while it still has the SEC on CBS at 3:30 p.m. Eastern. The network will continue to be the home of Big Ten men's basketball, including the conference tournament semifinals and finals, and it will begin airing the women's basketball tournament championship.


Starting in 2023, NBC will launch "Big Ten Saturday Night" in prime time and broadcast 15-16 games per season. The agreement with NBC also includes eight football games and dozens of men's and women's basketball games per season to be exclusively streamed on Peacock, the network's online subscription service. NBC also has a separate, longstanding broadcast deal with Notre Dame, which remains unaffiliated with a conference.


Warren spent more than two decades working as an executive in the front office of three NFL teams. He said the Big Ten's vision for its new broadcast deal was modeled after an NFL Sunday, with three consecutive marquee games across three different networks, airing from noon to nearly midnight Eastern.


The league is in the midst of a 13-year deal with ESPN and Fox that ends in 2025, and reports earlier this year said the networks were not interested in early renegotiations. That is one of the reasons Oklahoma and Texas are leaving the league. The current deal pays the 10-school league about $200 million annually.


In 2019, the league and CBS Sports Network announced a four-year extension to televise football and basketball games through the 2022-2023 season. The deal, a four-year extension from the original agreement signed in the 2015-2016 season, is through a sublicense agreement with ESPN. The deal is worth about $8 million a year, which means each of the 12 schools receives about $600,000 annually.


Spanning five linear networks, including the Big Ten Network and FS1, the deal positions the Big Ten with three premier windows to show college football games on broadcast television. Fox will air a featured "Big Noon" game on Saturdays at noon ET with CBS following at 3:30 p.m. and NBC wrapping up each week with "Big Ten Saturday Night" in primetime.


This will create an "unprecedented opportunity for Big Ten football," according to CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus, who cited the league's ability to have games in each of the best telecast windows across three traditional broadcast networks.


The 2023 season will be unique for college football fans watching on CBS. The network will broadcast both SEC and Big Ten games before transitioning to a full Big Ten schedule in 2024. The seven Big Ten games airing on CBS in 2023 will be an addition to a full schedule of 15 SEC games, including the SEC Championship Game, that season.


"CBS has been an incredible partner to the Big Ten Conference and today we strengthen our partnership to include Big Ten football, men's basketball and our women's basketball tournament," Warren said. "We are thrilled to continue our work with their world-class team specifically Sean McManus, David Berson, Dan Weinberg and Bess Barnes. We deeply value our relationship and their commitment to our fans, conference, member institutions and student-athletes."


Which networks will air which games? The Big Ten and Fox will coordinate a "draft" with games being chosen by the networks across each of the seven years of the deal. Fox will have the first pick each year, a source told CBS Sports, meaning the network will likely will end up the crown jewel of the intraconference matchups: Michigan vs. Ohio State. CBS and NBC will trade off the second and third picks in various years, according to sources.


The arrangement, which includes five networks in total along with FS1 and the Big Ten Network (BTN), takes effect next July and runs through the 2029-30 season. ESPN was left out of the mix, ending its 40-year relationship with the Big Ten just before the network is set to begin a new 10-year media rights deal with the SEC worth about $7 billion.


As the Big Ten prepares to become a 16-team, coast-to-coast superconference with the additions of USC and UCLA in 2024, it is ending a 40-year relationship with ESPN and moving toward partnerships with two new networks.


Two people familiar with the negotiations told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the Big Ten was looking for a seven-year deal worth $380 million per year to broadcast its football and basketball games from ESPN, and the network declined.


The deal would not have given ESPN first choice of Big Ten football games in a given week at any point and would have reduced the number of Big Ten games the network could broadcast from the current 27 to about half that number, one of the people familiar with the talks said.


While neither conference is expected to come anywhere close to landing deals that rival in value the Big Ten's and SEC's, not having the Big Ten creates more space for ESPN to fill on its family of networks.


TV followed the same path: thanks to the increased cost of producing video relative to audio, the economic logic of centralized content production was even more compelling (as were the proceeds from selling ads nationally). The content was more compelling as well, leading to further innovation in distribution, specifically the advent of cable that I wrote about earlier this year. That new distribution led to further innovation in content: new networks were created specifically for cable, even though cable had originally been created to help people receive over-the-air broadcasts.


Local stations originally pushed back against this shift, de-affiliating with networks that pushed too hard. The problem, though, came back to content: networks had everything from popular sitcoms and dramas to national news to late night talk shows. The most important bit of content, though, was sports. Moreover, the importance of sports has only increased as those other content offerings have been unbundled by the Internet: streaming services have sitcoms and dramas, websites have all of the news you could ever want to consume, and social media provides all kinds of comedy and commentary; the one exception to Internet disruption are live games between teams you care about.


Several sports channels have tried to rival ESPN. Fox Sports 1 experienced the most success, while the NBC Sports Network came and went, but ESPN remains the standard-bearer. In March, ESPN reported its best first quarter ratings in five years.


Even after the Big Ten Network launched in 2007 (with Fox as a majority stakeholder), ESPN and ABC remained a home for many marquee Big Ten clashes. In 2021, ABC or ESPN combined to televise eight games featuring top Big Ten brands Michigan or Ohio State. 2ff7e9595c


0 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Komentar


bottom of page