Six years ago, the Big Ten signed a deal with ESPN for $40m/yr to show approximately 25 football and 50 basketball games per year. That isn’t a tremendous amount of content, but it leaves a hole now that they have moved on.
To put that into perspective, given that football seasons are roughly 13-14 weeks long, that’s now ~2 games per week that ESPN no longer has in the 11:00/2:30 windows. Usually, those are the Beth Mowins games you hear on ESPN2 at noon, but it also extends into other windows, too.
The initial thought is that you’d just backfill that with OU and UT heading to the SEC. That is partially correct; adding them brings about 23 games per year total, and nine conference games. It’s likely that ESPN pushes a number of these SEC games into those slots, but it’s also going to be pushing more content onto SEC Network, as a result, to increase subscriber fees because of increased content. That won’t overcome the full deficit.
Well, what about the ACC? Couldn’t they fill in some of those spots? Sure, but they also have to push 2-3 games (of their 7 conference games total) per week to ACCN as a means to make money for their horrible network. The ACC has also adopted their role as Thursday night football kings, so that’s yet another game that won’t be on Saturday. They’ll also get one of ABC’s three spots on Saturday, so now you’re down to 2-3 games on the ESPN networks every Saturday.
The AAC has been massively depreciated, so they aren’t going to be any help, there. They’ll plug contractually obligated spots until they have their contract renewed. There is a chance the Sun Belt picks up some of the slack, but it won’t be much. They’re a big driver for ESPN+.
If you do all of the math, ESPN/ESPN2/ESPNU can carry 12 games each Saturday (Noon-Midnight). SEC will take ~3. ACC will take ~2. G5 schools may get ~2. That leaves ~5 games each Saturday for more content. If the Pac-12 stays together at ten, they’ll take two after dark spots per week, and maybe one game during the day. That means the leftover two spots likely go to us.
This is extremely important for ESPN for a couple of reasons. One, because we have BYU, we can play in any spot most weeks. Our conference has maximum flexibility. Two, with the Big Ten gone, and the Pac 12 unable to fill basketball spots most weeks, they need our basketball content more than ever to help fill the ~50 games the Big Ten is vacating. OU and UT will fill some, but not all. There is a better than average chance we will have exclusive basketball rights on ESPN going forward.
So, this Big Ten news, while earth shattering, actually puts us in a really good spot. It leaves us as the only real option to fill their vacancy on ESPN, and it opens up 2:30 on Fox, with some open spots at night in November after baseball.
We are going to be the only conference that likely has a major presence on both major carriers after all of this shakes out, and that’s a pretty damn good place to be.
To put that into perspective, given that football seasons are roughly 13-14 weeks long, that’s now ~2 games per week that ESPN no longer has in the 11:00/2:30 windows. Usually, those are the Beth Mowins games you hear on ESPN2 at noon, but it also extends into other windows, too.
The initial thought is that you’d just backfill that with OU and UT heading to the SEC. That is partially correct; adding them brings about 23 games per year total, and nine conference games. It’s likely that ESPN pushes a number of these SEC games into those slots, but it’s also going to be pushing more content onto SEC Network, as a result, to increase subscriber fees because of increased content. That won’t overcome the full deficit.
Well, what about the ACC? Couldn’t they fill in some of those spots? Sure, but they also have to push 2-3 games (of their 7 conference games total) per week to ACCN as a means to make money for their horrible network. The ACC has also adopted their role as Thursday night football kings, so that’s yet another game that won’t be on Saturday. They’ll also get one of ABC’s three spots on Saturday, so now you’re down to 2-3 games on the ESPN networks every Saturday.
The AAC has been massively depreciated, so they aren’t going to be any help, there. They’ll plug contractually obligated spots until they have their contract renewed. There is a chance the Sun Belt picks up some of the slack, but it won’t be much. They’re a big driver for ESPN+.
If you do all of the math, ESPN/ESPN2/ESPNU can carry 12 games each Saturday (Noon-Midnight). SEC will take ~3. ACC will take ~2. G5 schools may get ~2. That leaves ~5 games each Saturday for more content. If the Pac-12 stays together at ten, they’ll take two after dark spots per week, and maybe one game during the day. That means the leftover two spots likely go to us.
This is extremely important for ESPN for a couple of reasons. One, because we have BYU, we can play in any spot most weeks. Our conference has maximum flexibility. Two, with the Big Ten gone, and the Pac 12 unable to fill basketball spots most weeks, they need our basketball content more than ever to help fill the ~50 games the Big Ten is vacating. OU and UT will fill some, but not all. There is a better than average chance we will have exclusive basketball rights on ESPN going forward.
So, this Big Ten news, while earth shattering, actually puts us in a really good spot. It leaves us as the only real option to fill their vacancy on ESPN, and it opens up 2:30 on Fox, with some open spots at night in November after baseball.
We are going to be the only conference that likely has a major presence on both major carriers after all of this shakes out, and that’s a pretty damn good place to be.
