In a summer that keeps churning out seismic events in college sports, ESPN’s decision to drop out of bidding for Big Ten television rights is another massive domino to tumble, albeit not entirely unexpectedly.
With Fox – which owns the Big Ten Network – acting as the conference’s agent in negotiations for its new television package, starting in 2024, it was always going to be an upstream swim for ESPN. An ask of $380 million over seven years for a limited package of games, according to the Sports Business Journal, which broke the news, was a bridge too far for Bristol.
With CBS picking up Big Ten’s 3:30 p.m. football game and other rights and NBC reportedly getting into the mix to obtain so-called shoulder programming to show before and after Notre Dame football games, both for about $350 million a year according to multiple reports, these are all worst-case scenarios for the ACC.
