ESPN and Southeastern Conference ink 15-year pact
NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - The Southeastern Conference for collegiate football, basketball and other sports has looked down the path toward starting its own network and said "No thanks."
The SEC announced a massive 15-year deal with ESPN on Monday for all of its televised sports, effectively eliminating the possibility that it would start its own network a la the Big Ten and the Mountain West.
Instead, the SEC will tie up its fortunes with the cable giant until 2024 for an amount believed to be in the area of an eye-popping $2.25 billion.
The SEC-ESPN agreement gives the network the rights to some highly coveted football and basketball games as well as a host of Olympic and other sports, including a bevy of national championships. Many of the deal points expand on the reach of ESPN's current deal with the SEC, which expires next year.
The network said Monday that it will distribute SEC content through various linear platforms including its two flagship cable nets as well as ABC, ESPNU and digital platforms such as ESPN360 and ESPN Mobile.
The new pact follows a 15-year agreement the SEC signed with CBS earlier in the month. That deal gave CBS several perks for some of the higher-profile sports that it didn't have under its expiring deal, including first dibs on an SEC football game every week.
The ESPN arrangement gives the sports network some advantages it didn't hold under its previous deal, including the rights to the semifinals and finals of the SEC men's basketball tournament (which will be broadcast on ABC), an increase in football games to 20 per season and two additional nights of regular-season men's hoops.
Like other conferences and pro teams, the SEC had been making noise about starting its own network, a move that would have given it greater control and upside but also more financial vulnerability.
SEC commissioner Mike Slive told reporters Monday that the ESPN and CBS deals give the conference long-term security "without the problems and risks associated with starting a network."
Still, the very possibility that the SEC could have gone its own way gave the conference increased leverage in negotiations and assured that both CBS and ESPN would sign on for the longest-range pacts in the history of televised sports.
The biggest loser in the new ESPN deal will be Raycom, the Alabama-based station owner and sports syndication entity that had been syndicating many of the conference's non-national games. ESPN will syndicate those games under its regional television division when the new agreements kick in next year.
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
