In a deal that could help the fortunes of eclectic sports network Versus, Fox Sports Net has agreed “sublicense up to 10 college football games” to the network, featuring “teams like USC, UCLA and California.”
This comes on the heels of an FSN agreement to sublicense five Big 12 games to ESPN for the upcoming season.
Immediately, Pac-10 and Big-12 football games become the most attractive sports programming on Versus, outdistancing the Tour de France, Mountain West football and basketball and National Hockey League games by a wide margin. It should be taken into account that games on Versus will not be the marquee games of each conference; this is essentially the same deal Turner had to air football games on TBS. That being said, any game involving a college football powerhouse like USC is bound to bring in decent numbers — or at the very least, numbers higher than the ones garnered for other Versus programming.
