Next year’s Big Ten football championship, already a point of contention in the conference’s media rights deal, could be on the move from NBC.
NBCUniversal has had discussions about a deal to “sublicense” next year’s Big Ten football championship game with both Netflix and Amazon, John Ourand of Puck reported Thursday night. Netflix was reportedly not interested and talks with Amazon are said to be in the “early stages.”
Per Ourand, any effort to sublicense the game would have to be approved by both the Big Ten and Fox Sports — the latter of whom, as ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported in 2023, holds all of the Big Ten programming rights via its ownership of Big Ten Network.
It was not clear in the report exactly how NBC can ‘sublicense’ rights that it only owns through what is for all intents and purposes a sublicensing agreement with Fox.
Next year’s Big Ten title game — the only one on NBC during the network’s seven-year Big Ten rights deal — only belongs to NBC because former Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren awarded the network rights without permission from Fox, Thamel reported in ’23. That move, per the report, cost the conference $40 million in compensation to Fox.
And the Big Ten has already rejected an effort to pull inventory out of the current media rights deals to sell to other bidders. Ourand reported earlier this year that USC and Netflix were exploring ways the streamer could carry the annual school’s annual football rivalry game against Notre Dame, perhaps even by holding it outside of the country. (As Ourand noted, it is somewhat surprising that Netflix would be interested in a Notre Dame-USC game, but not a conference title game.)
It is also the case that the only reason NBC has Big Ten rights is because the conference wanted the larger reach of broadcast television over a streaming-exclusive platform like Amazon, which had been in talks for the same package that NBC eventually acquired, per Thamel.
Ultimately, NBC would be selling a title game that contractually belonged to Fox — and was given away without its permission — to a streamer that the conference spurned in favor of NBC.
Much has changed since the Big Ten media rights deal was negotiated — including the standing of Amazon, which now owns a considerable slate of sports rights — but the effort seems farfetched.
The report Thursday is just the latest indication that the Big Ten media rights deal has not gone quite as planned. With games spread across three different networks, the conference lacks the cohesive promotional platform the SEC enjoys on ESPN/ABC. And it is widely believed that the Big Ten lacks the depth to sustain a ‘game of the week’ for three different partners.
Now, one of the three broadcasters is seeming to signal that one of the highest-profile games of the year is expendable.
Sublicensing is common in college sports rights deals. The Big 12 has only two main rightsholders in ESPN and Fox Sports, but those companies have struck sublicensing deals that will result in the conference’s games airing on TNT Sports, CBS Sports and NBC’s Peacock as well.
But there is likely no precedent for sublicensing a conference title game, especially to a streamer that has no other rights during the season. Nor is there precedent for a sublicensing rights that are ultimately controlled by a competing network.
