Despite ESPN being forced to cut $350 million off its budget by 2018, live sports remain the medium's Holy Grail. This is good news for the Big Ten, a conference that contains Urban Meyer, Jim Harbaugh, Mark Dantonio, and James Franklin; its contract with ESPN/ABC is up in 2016-2017.
There are reasons to think every major network will throw its hat into the ring:
Ken Fang of AwfulAnnouncing.com dropped an interesting look at the upcoming negotiations today:
Armed with Fox Sports 1, Fox is hoping that its cable sports network will lure the Big Ten to place games there. And despite the fact that Big East basketball hasn’t been drawing audiences since the 2013-14 season, Fox can point to the recent Women’s World Cup as an example that FS1 can bring viewers into the fold.
ESPN will say that it’s been a loyal partner to the Big Ten back to the days when ABC Sports was airing games in the mid-1980’s. And it will say it has the infrastructure with ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC.
And CBS will point to the fact that it has broadcast basketball since the 1990’s and its conference tournament since its inception.
NBC is a potential wild card knowing that this will be its last chance to get a major sports property until the next decade and it doesn’t want to get shut out.
If I'm picking, the only way I'm not rolling ESPN is if its offer isn't financially comparable to another offer. Say what you will about the sports media conglomerate, but its college football product — Mark May's blabbering maw aside — is second to none.
Given the trends of Americans "cutting the cord" — it must be something Delany wants to wrap up sooner than later.
