The Big Ten Has a Prime Opportunity With Its Media Rights Package

Splitting its game broadcasts onto three networks would be a savvy move for the conference.

The Big Ten has a chance to be in the right place at the right time.

Many expected the league to announce its fancy new TV rights package, which will probably be north of $1 billion, around Memorial Day (that was the scuttle during league meetings in early May). The end of that month has come and gone and there’s no press release. As negotiations continue, it now seems like the next logical time to announce something would be around conference media days at the end of July—if it can get a deal (or deals) done.

One thing we know: Fox will remain in control of the primary package of games (think Ohio State/Michigan/Penn State vs. anyone good). Fox stumbled into Big Noon Saturday games by scheduling necessity to avoid conflicts with Major League Baseball, and it has been a success. But there’s opportunity here if NBC is really pushing for another college football game to pair with Notre Dame in a doubleheader slot, as Front Office Sports reported, and if CBS wants to stay in the college football game after losing the SEC, as Sports Business Journal reported.

The Big Ten’s current media rights deal expires in 2023 :: Joseph Cress/Iowa City Press-Citizen/USA TODAY Network

The Big Ten could hypothetically blanket your Saturday on three broadcast networks by splitting the package. Let’s take a random league schedule for an example. Here’s Oct. 7:

• Nebraska at Rutgers
• Wisconsin at Northwestern
• Michigan at Indiana
• Ohio State at Michigan State
• Iowa at Illinois
• Purdue at Maryland

That’s one great matchup on paper, and two O.K. ones. A hypothetical national TV slate could go: Ohio State at Michigan State on Fox at noon; Wisconsin at Northwestern on CBS at 3:30; and Michigan at Indiana on NBC at 7:30. The rest can head to the Big Ten Network.

Whether you think those games are sexy is immaterial. Where they’re broadcast is important for the league’s continued visibility as it fights for supremacy against the SEC, and utilizing three different broadcast networks means three different networks have incentive to promote their games—and that promotion can occur during, for instance, NFL Sundays or the World Series. As the season gets into its later days, matchups get juicier as the Playoff push comes into focus. Considering the Big Ten is probably going to get rid of divisions soon, a new scheduling arrangement could yield different and better matchups down the stretch. CBS has an existing relationship with the Big Ten for men’s basketball, and a rights agreement with the Tiffany Network could include continuing to share those games with Fox.

This would also wrestle some control over the schedule—and some might say the sport, existentially—away from ESPN. There would be consternation about doing that from coaches and athletic directors who see ESPN as a draw because of its ubiquity, but there are others within the footprint who will always think the four-letter network has bias against it because there isn’t, for instance, a Big Ten version of Paul Finebaum who can pop on SportsCenter and stump for the league. But even as ESPN’s SEC ties deepen, it’s not as if the network will go quietly into the night as a long-term partner of the league. However, Fox’s 60% stake in the Big Ten Network means that Fox is consulting on a deal with other networks, including ESPN, its chief rival, as it continues to position itself as an alternative home for some of college football’s best games and use the noon time slot, which was for years a deadzone.

There are further suitors as well, including Turner Sports (now owned by Warner Bros. Discover) and of course Amazon and Apple as tech giants with more money than God. Whether it’s worth it to stick college sports behind another layer of streaming is for the suits to decide, but if either gets a Big Ten package of games it would be the first rights deal in this country that either did not win by default. For instance, Amazon has exclusive NFL rights for Thursday night, which none of the other networks wanted.

The Big Ten is not the be-all, end-all for any of these media companies, as the Big 12 and an increasingly needy Pac-12 have rights deals coming up in the next few years. But depending on where you live, the Big Ten’s brand is only eclipsed by the SEC in college football, and those are the rights still up for bid.