The South Eastern Conference has dominated NCAA football for the past 6 years. The teams of the SEC and their fans are some of the most avid sports fans on the planet. Millions tune in the SEC games each week on TV. SEC TV will ensure that the universities involved will be sharing in a much bigger piece of the revenues generated by broadcasting the games on TV. The gains can be huge. For example, Alabama and Michigan split over 9 million dollars after the season opener played in Arlington, Texas. That was just one football game!
The SEC’s negotiations with ESPN about a new channel are nearing their final stages, and a glimpse inside the talks reveals that three issues are close to being resolved before the channel’s expected launch in August 2014. Currently the SEC Network is a syndication package featuring college football and basketball events from the Southeastern Conference. The package is owned and operated by ESPN Regional Television and is shown in more than 50 percent of households in the United States, mostly Southeastern United States markets.
The SEC needs the local TV rights back from the schools to give the channel part of the content it needs. Those rights belong to the schools’ rights holders — IMG College, Learfield Sports and CBS Collegiate Sports Properties — so the SEC must negotiate with them to acquire those rights before launching a channel.
Such a channel eventually will become a cash cow for the conference and the colleges involved. But the SEC will have to spend some money first to regain control over all of its live games. CBS and ESPN have the first pick of football games. Those games that are not picked fall into the schools’ local TV rights or third-tier rights package.
CBS has the rights at LSU, while Learfield has Alabama, Missouri, Mississippi State and Texas A&M. IMG College has the rights at the rest of the schools, except for Ole Miss, plus a minority share of the Alabama property. ESPN is not likely to partner with another media company on the SEC channel. That leaves Charlotte-based ESPN Regional Television, the ESPN unit that operates ESPNU and manages all of the network-owned bowl games and basketball tournaments, poised to take a significant role in the channel. Sources familiar with the negotiations say that ESPN Regional Television’s Charlotte office likely will become the headquarters for the new SEC channel because it already has the infrastructure and talent to get the channel up and running efficiently.
Sports Fans all over the south are eagerly looking forward to having their own SEC TV Network.
