Notre Dame And The Pursuit Of Its Next TV Contract

Notre Dame has two years remaining on its current NBC TV contract as it fights to maintain future football independence

Where will Notre Dame’s next home game television contract land? The answer to that question has been NBC since 1991, but will it remain the same beginning in 2025? In a landscape where once seemingly solid conferences have become wind-blown houses of cards, Notre Dame’s future football independence likely hinges on the answer.

The Fighting Irish have this season and next remaining on their current contract with NBC before that deal expires. Former NBC Sports chairman Pete Bevacqua, who was just announced as Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick’s successor last week, is riding shotgun with Swarbrick for the next year as the Special Assistant to the President for Athletics before he officially moves into Swarbrick’s seat on July 1, 2024.

Until then, it is expected that Swarbrick and Bevacqua will work together to sign a new TV contract that will be competitive with the reported $75 million annual payout Big Ten schools are expected to receive by 2025, when Notre Dame’s next contract would begin. Notre Dame currently receives around $26 million annually from a combination of its TV revenue from NBC and its ACC agreement.

“Sources say the school should expect around $60 million per year from a new contract,” sports media reporter John Ourand said last year in the Sports Business Journal. “Though it’s hard to predict how the media business will look three years from now.”

Sources have recently indicated to Irish Breakdown that the $60 million figure is a realistic number to expect from the new deal. But will the one-of-a-kind contract remain with NBC, where it has been for more than three decades, or will it land on another network?

Bevacqua’s ties to NBC have led to speculation that staying with NBC is a done deal. That remains to be seen, but his history in negotiating similar deals makes him uniquely qualified to play a pivotal role in negotiating Notre Dame’s next TV contract.

As the CEO of the PGA in 2013, Bevacqua negotiated a 15-year media rights deal with NBC for the Ryder Cup, the Senior PGA Championship and the PGA Professional Championship. In 2020 he became the third Chairman of NBC Sports, where he negotiated NBC’s new Big Ten contract as well as the NFL Sunday Night Football package, the Olympics and other sports properties. Bevacqua is also a 1993 Notre Dame alum who values Notre Dame’s longstanding independence.

“I’m a fan of independence, for sure,” Bevacqua told SI last week. “It’s another element of what makes Notre Dame different. I think those differentiators for Notre Dame are more important and more valuable today than they’ve ever been.”

How set is Notre Dame on staying with NBC? They have a good relationship that has benefited both sides. Notre Dame has been the most consistent football product on NBC since the deal began in 1991 and the arrangement has allowed Notre Dame to avoid the fate of Penn State, which gave up its independence to join the Big Ten in 1993, as well as the likes of BYU, which became independent in 2011 but is joining the Big 12 this season.

For Notre Dame to maximize its bottom line in rights fees it needs more than just NBC to bid on the rights. That means at least one of Fox, CBS and ESPN/Disney needs to be a suitor as well.

“In terms of attractiveness, as for TV, Notre Dame is number one,” New York Post sports media reporter Andrew Marchand recently told Irish Breakdown. “They’re the Cowboys of college football, the Yankees of college football or whatever analogy you want to make. They’re the Notre Dame of college football.”

With Notre Dame’s next television contract to begin with the 2025 football season, here’s a look at where things will stand with the other college football properties each of the four major broadcast networks will have at that time:

NBC

Beginning with this season, NBC is slated to broadcast the Big Ten’s new “Big Ten Saturday Night” prime-time package. Eight other Big Ten games per season will also be streamed on Peacock.

Aside from possibly Notre Dame, the prime-time Big Ten games are the only college football property that would air on NBC’s linear/broadcast network.

“It’s also perfect for Notre Dame,” Swarbrick told a Notre Dame alumni group in an online chat after the NBC/Big Ten deal was announced last summer. “We need NBC to have more college football to more effectively promote our games and to talk about our games and to have NBC be seen in that light. So that was great for us that (NBC) got a big piece of this.”

What It Means For Notre Dame: With only the prime-time slot accounted for, NBC will continue to have afternoon inventory for Notre Dame games throughout the afternoon. That means home games could continue to kickoff at 2:30 or 3:30 pm in the afternoon windows. NBC will also continue to accommodate Fighting Irish prime time home games this season (Ohio State and USC) and next season in lieu of Big Ten games in the evening time slot. They would be expected to continue to make that accommodation if they continue to broadcast Notre Dame’s home games in 2025 and beyond. NBC’s continues to be a strong option for Notre Dame.

FOX

FOX, which also has cable channels FS1 and FS2 as well as the Big Ten Network, is a Big Ten TV partner as well as part of the seven-year deal it signed with the conference. FOX will air a featured "Big Noon" game on Saturdays at noon ET throughout the season. FOX will also continue to broadcast Big 12 games through the 2031 season. FOX also currently broadcasts Pac-12 games, but that contract expires at the end of the upcoming season and Marchand said on the most recent edition The Marchand and Ourand Sports Media Podcast that he does not expect FOX to renew with the conference.

What It Means For Notre Dame: The only fixed time slot on FOX is the Big Noon slot allotted to the Big Ten. While FOX will also broadcast other Big Ten games as well as Big 12 games, it has its linear channel as well as its cable channels at its disposal to do so. That leaves both the late afternoon window at the conclusion of the noon games as well as the prime-time evening window to potentially broadcast Notre Dame games if the Irish were to sign with the network. FOX sports also streams on the Hulu + Live TV platform. Lower tier Notre Dame home games that have exclusively streamed on Peacock in recent years could also potentially find their way to FS1 or the streaming platform. The availability of time slots after the noon games concludes makes FOX a potential option.

CBS

SEC football has been on CBS since 1996, but that will end after this season when the SEC goes to ESPN/Disney. CBS will broadcast seven Big Ten games this season and that will expand to 14-15 games per season from 2024-2029. Those games will air exclusively in the 3:30 pm ET window. All CBS games will also be streamed live on the Paramount+ service.

What It Means For Notre Dame: The fact that the Big Ten is currently the only conference contracted with CBS is a plus, but the window its games are contracted to air in could make it prohibitive for a deal with Notre Dame. If 14-15 Big Ten games begin at 3:30 pm every Saturday, Notre Dame would likely have to start its home games at either 11:00 or 11:30 am to play before the 3:30 kickoffs and/or at 8:00 pm to play prime-time games at the conclusion of the Big Ten games. That limitation makes it seem very unlikely that CBS is a viable option.

ESPN/Disney

The SEC is taking its ball and heading to ESPN/Disney after signing a $330 million dollar contract last year. The ACC’s infamous grant of rights contract also keeps that conference with ESPN/Disney through 2036. The Big 12 will also continue to have some of its games on the ESPN networks as well. The Pac-12 also currently has a rights deal with ESPN, but Marchand also does not expect that to be the case by 2025.

What It Means For Notre Dame: While the ESPN networks will be dealing in more sheer tonnage with the full slate of SEC and ACC games and some Big 12 games on its networks, tonnage is always what the Worldwide Leader has always had. In addition to the main ESPN channel, ESPN2, ESPNU and even ESPN News are all cable channel options to carry games and the ABC linear/broadcast network is at its disposal as well. ESPN+ provides even more streaming capability and both the SEC Network and ACC Network are under the ESPN umbrella. ESPN/Disney would be more than capable of adding Notre Dame.

“I think they’re well positioned in terms of what they’ll be able to get if they were to, especially if they open it up and not just look for NBC,” Marchand told Irish Breakdown of Notre Dame’s potential negotiating power going forward. “If they were to be willing to go to ESPN or CBS or Fox. They’d make it work, those networks, if that opportunity comes. My gut is they’ll stay at NBC, but if they wanted to use some leverage there, they definitely could probably drive the price up a little bit more.”

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