The biggest college football story in 2008 is still three years away from coming to fruition.
College football’s national championship game, typically the highest rated non-NFL sporting event of a given year, is moving from broadcast to cable. ESPN and the Bowl Championship Series signed a four-year, $500 million dollar deal in mid-November, calling for the cable sports network to carry four of the five BCS bowl games starting in 2011.
As part of the deal, the BCS National Championship Game will air on ESPN in 2011, 2012 and 2013, marking the first time since the NHL in the mid-1990s that a championship of a major U.S. sport will air on cable.
The deal is a seismic shift for televised sports. While sports like the NBA and Major League Baseball have put the majority of their playoff games on cable, including the NBA Conference Finals and the MLB League Championship Series, their championship events remain broadcast staples. The BCS now enters a brave new world, where the stature of its highest profile event may end up diminished compared to that of the World Series, NBA Finals and Daytona 500.
The new television deal came months after ratings for the BCS slumped for the second straight year. Last January’s National Championship Game between LSU and Ohio State drew a 14.4 rating, the third-lowest rating for college football’s championship in the BCS era. Meanwhile, the Sugar, Orange and Fiesta Bowls each failed to draw even an 8.0 rating on FOX. The Sugar and Orange Bowls in particular drew two of the five lowest ratings ever for BCS bowls. A shift to cable will likely take those numbers even lower.
The BCS deal was not the lone college football television contract negotiatied this year. In August, the SEC signed separate fifteen year deals with CBS and ESPN worth approximately $3 billion. As part of the deal, CBS will continue airing its slate of weekly SEC home football games, while the ESPN family of networks will have the rights to all SEC home games that do not air on CBS.
Meanwhile, in June, NBC and Notre Dame extended their television agreement through 2015. Under the new deal, NBC will continue airing Notre Dame home games, but with one new wrinkle: an off-site, prime time game each year.
2008 helped prove that college football is one of the most valuable properties in sports, with networks spending billions of dollars for the rights to air more games. Looking to the future, could that value be on the decline? A downward trend in BCS ratings only figures to continue — especially with FOX being a lame duck for the next two years. And ratings figure to drop even further once the BCS moves to ESPN in 2011.
For now, college football remains a powerhouse — and a trendsetter. Years from now, the BCS deal with ESPN will be looked at as the tip of the iceberg when it comes to championship events on cable.
