The tectonic shifts to college football in recent years have come with a number of revelations about the inner workings of conference television contracts.
One such revelation came last year when it was revealed that NBC had yet to sign its full length contract with the Big Ten after learning about provisions that certain high-wattage schools in the conference do not play night games late in the season. That type of provision, of course, is a big deal for NBC who airs the majority of its Big Ten package at night. Recently, it was revealed that NBC has still yet to sign those contracts, despite having aired its full allotment of Big Ten games the past two seasons.
Well now, it’s looking like the fact that NBC hasn’t signed on the dotted line isn’t that strange after all.
Appearing on Puck’s The Varsity podcast with John Ourand, Washington Post media reporter Ben Strauss revealed that similarly to NBC’s current situation with the Big Ten, CBS never actually signed its full contracts for its iconic SEC on CBS package.
“This was kind of shocking to me too, but this is not unprecedented,” Strauss began. “It’s my understanding that CBS and the SEC never signed their full long form contract of their, like, long partnership. So, the money can still change hands. You still get the games on television, right? Things move along. But, it allows for way more haggling and way more arguing and way more, ‘You promised this, you’re supposed to do this.’ But it’s not unprecedented to not sign these long form contracts. But like, it certainly makes it more complicated. And it certainly lends itself to more arguing over what is owed.
“…You could probably look at it two ways, right? NBC’s going to give $350 million a year, shouldn’t they want to know exactly what’s in the contract before they signed it? And on the other side, I think that they would say we had a pretty strong understanding and the Big Ten and Fox came back and changed the terms on us. The fact is that they’re just not going to end up with very many Ohio State or Michigan games. And I think that what they would tell you, what they’ve expressed to other people, is that they didn’t realize the extent of other teams that were going to say, ‘We’re not going to play at night.'”
The fascinating part of all of this is that the unsigned contracts seem, at some level, intentional for the networks. It allows for a level of horse trading to be done between them and the conference. It can also provide an ability to be nimble in certain circumstances, rather than tied to the strict language of a signed contract.
Now, NBC’s situation is unique in the sense that the network was not really negotiating with a conference. Rather, they were negotiating with Big Ten Network, who is majority-owned by Fox and controls all of the Big Ten conference’s media rights.
Was there some gamesmanship involved there? It’s definitely possible. That frustration could be one reason NBC has yet to sign its contract. By not doing so, the network could retain some level of leverage to jockey for better games, and have a credible threat to walk away if they don’t.
But on the surface, it seems ridiculous that these multibillion-dollar deals are seemingly nothing more than a handshake agreement. It’s worked out for the industry so far, but it seems like it’s only a matter of time until someone with an unsigned contract gets burned.
Then, this practice of informality and smaller signed agreements could cause some real problems.
