Until recently, Bob Thompson described himself as a “social media outcast.” You name the platform (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok) and he wasn’t there.
But what better time to join the fray, he thought last month, than while recovering from shoulder surgery? The former TV executive, who lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, has spent the last few weeks lying in bed with his arm in a sling.
And so, as he does, he joined Twitter. I was in for a rude awakening.
“Boy,” he says, “I learned very quickly that there are a lot of experts out there.”
Thompson’s new venture was perfectly aligned with a seismic moment in sports, as the new-look Big Ten finalizes the richest television contract in the history of the industry, estimated at about $1.2 billion annually. The timing was not accidental. Thompson, the president of Fox Sports Network for a decade until he retired in 2009, is fascinated by these mega-million media rights deals that are ultimately altering the landscape of college sports.
No TV deal is as fascinating as the one-man curator Kevin Warren & Co. is piling up in Chicago, where starting in 2024 three different networks are expected to acquire the rights to broadcast their league’s games in three different windows: Fox (midday), CBS (afternoon) and NBC (primetime). In a somewhat expected but still shocking move, the conference is moving forward without the world leader in sports.
ESPN and ABC are out, and the college sports world is in awe.
“It’s amazing,” says Thompson. “They’ve been together for 40 years.”
“It’s outrageous that ESPN isn’t part of a major association in college sports,” says one Power 5 conference administrator. “It has shock value.”
Former Fox Sports president Bob Thompson, shown here in 2005, is among the sports media figures fascinated by the Big Ten’s move from ESPN.
Jerry Cleveland/Getty Images
“Strange,” “unbelievable” and “risky” are words industry stakeholders are using to describe the fragmentation of a four-decade partnership between the nation’s biggest sports network and arguably its sports conference richest university student The ESPN-Big Ten marriage dates back to ESPN’s third year of existence, and the relationship with ABC is even older. In 1966, the network nationally televised Michigan State’s 10-10 tie with Notre Dame, the first college football game to be broadcast to Hawaii and to troops overseas in Vietnam.
While the conference says the deals have yet to be finalized, an announcement is expected as early as next week.
In a move indicative of college sports’ shift toward television revenue and away from time-honored traditions, the division is expected to have a broad impact, notably freeing up television space and money for the Pac-12 and Big 12, both. media rights agreements expire over the next two years. “It was a really good day for both of those conferences,” says Thompson, who believes ESPN wants at least a piece of each league.
Like many others, Thompson believes the Big Ten’s inclusion of NBC guarantees Notre Dame’s independence, something its own athletic director suggested to reporters Wednesday. The Irish, as expected, don’t seem to be in a rush to join any league and are now likely to use the new market rates to get more money out of NBC.
Thompson says NBC’s new role with the Big Ten now gives Notre Dame a chance to “marry” its game with a weekly Big Ten game in a mix of high-level college football action in a network that for so long had remained mostly off the grid. sport “NBC is going to try to make Saturday night college football like Sunday night NFL,” Thompson says. “It’s a great show.”
ESPN’s divorce from the Big Ten is another wave in a sea of change that has engulfed college athletics. The network carried 27 football games and 80 men’s basketball games a year. It partnered with the two leagues to operate the ACC–Big Ten Challenge, an annual basketball event that began in 1999 and which many presume will now end.
Here is a nostalgic piece. College football Saturdays often began with a Big Ten game on ABC or ESPN or both. “It was a right of way to turn on the television at 11 [central] and see Northwestern and Indiana,” says one Big 12 administrator. “It was like an ‘okay, the day has begun!’
ESPN’s promotional power within sports is undeniable. It remains the only national 24/7 multi-platform all-sports network. The network airs about 90 percent of bowl games and has exclusive rights to the College Football Playoff and the CFP Selection Committee’s ranking program.
ESPN’s influence is such that one conference commissioner says, “It’s surprising the Big Ten didn’t take a few less dollars and stick with ESPN.”
A Group of 5 athletic director calls the Big Ten’s decision a “bad move” and compares it to Big East basketball losing relevance after leaving ESPN. “While you can’t ignore Ohio State, don’t break with ESPN for more than a few million a year,” says the AD. “Not worth it.”
Ultimately, money was the sticking point, sources tell Sports Illustrated. The network decided not to bid against CBS for the afternoon slot and refused to meet the Big Ten’s package for the prime-time television window. The prime-time package (seven years at $380 million annually) included about half the inventory (13 to 14 Big Ten games) that the network currently has. The network didn’t feel it was valuable enough for such a high price, especially given its new settlement with the SEC.
Starting in 2024, the league is paying the SEC roughly $300 million annually for the best games in that conference. Space is a bit limited. ESPN also has a master agreement with the ACC, along with other contracts with Group of 5 conferences. “Half the games for twice the money, that gives everybody pause,” Thompson says.
A Big Ten without ESPN won’t see the kind of promotion on the sport’s flagship network that it has in the past, most agree.
Says an athletic administrator at an SEC school: “I have to think GameDay isn’t going to show up at a Big Ten game very often. You have to think they won’t spend too much time in the Big Ten. It’s going to be fascinating to watch.”
From a recruiting standpoint, it’s a concern for some coaches around the league, says one Big Ten administrator. But it’s not as worrisome as it would have been just a few years ago. “Five years ago, they would have been scared,” says the administrator.
And now? While not having ESPN will be “weird” and an adjustment, today’s youth consume content not as much on SportsCenter as they do on their phones, mostly through social media channels.
An overshadowed part of the situation is men’s basketball. About 80 games once on ESPN will have to find a home, and that’s not so easy, Thompson says. He expects CBS to do some games, but wonders, “Do FS1? Does NBC get a piece with Peacock?”
From the start, ESPN found itself at a disadvantage in Big Ten negotiations, some believe, because of what insiders say is the rare involvement of a broadcast rival. Fox representatives attended Big Ten media rights meetings with other networks, a sign of how integral the network is in the decisions.
“It’s unusual to have them in every discussion,” says a university official. “Fox and ESPN have clearly had a falling out.”
The latest conference realignment moves are coming at the behest of the two networks, many inside the sport believe. Each is closely related to the two behemoths of college football: the SEC (ESPN) and the Big Ten (Fox), and each now owns a majority share of its television rights.
Thompson, however, does not accept the theory. First, curators and conference administrators ultimately make decisions in media rights negotiations, he says. And second, both Fox and ESPN need a healthy FBS, not a two-conference behemoth that resembles the NFL. Two 16-team conferences currently don’t cover enough markets, although that could change eventually.
“It may happen in the future, but I bet it would be closer to two 24-team leagues,” he says. “For both networks, it’s important that the ACC, Pac-12 and Big 12 remain strong.”
The Pac-12 is in the midst of a second exclusive negotiating window with ESPN and Fox, extending its original window through the completion of the Big Ten deal. The league is trying to secure its 10 members with a strong media rights contract. While ESPN’s expulsion from the Big Ten is a positive for the league, the lack of competition is a negative.
CBS and NBC seem like unlikely partners now that they’re with the Big Ten. And Fox’s situation is complicated. The network is a league partner that just stole the Pac-12’s two biggest brands in USC and UCLA.
So who will go up against ESPN for a West Coast league whose games typically start after 9pm ET?
One thing ESPN won’t do is overpay, says a college football official who has been involved in negotiations with the network. ESPN will use its influence and value — “We have all the sports talk shows!” — as a tool to keep the number down, he says.
“Realize it,” says a retired university administrator with a long record of negotiating against the network. “ESPN is tough, and if there’s no competition, you don’t want to be in that environment.”
For the Big Ten, that environment worked well. The league came up with what many say is a brilliant plan to offer three separate television windows with the intention of negotiating each separately and the goal of partnering with three different networks over a period of six to seven years, half the length of SEC ESPN. agreement Ultimately, it led to a major payday for Big Ten schools, which is estimated to be distributed between $80 million and $90 million per year.
Another plus for the Big Ten is cross-promotion…