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Tuesday, August 26, 2008
CBS, ESPN deals will be huge in recruiting for SEC
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I was still getting calls late Monday night about the SEC’s staggering 15-year deal with ESPN that will reportedly pay the league about $2.25 billion. That deal, coupled with the 15-year deal the SEC has signed with CBS will give the league financial security for a long, long time.
But the benefits to the SEC from these TV deals go far beyond financial. Here are some aspects of the deal that maybe you haven’t thought about:
1. It will be huge for the SEC in recruiting: The games on ESPN and ESPN2 will have a unique national branding as the “SEC on ESPN.” That may not sound like a big deal to you but it will be a major recruiting pitch in the future. No other conference has that kind of branding on ESPN: Not the Big Ten, not the Big 12, and not the ACC. The SEC will be able to walk into a living room and say that every conference game will either be on CBS or one of the ESPN platforms. And if the SEC is recruiting a player outside the nine-state area, the coaches can tell parents that the games will be on the dish as part of ESPN’s Game Plan. This is a huge part of this deal. The NFL has the best television package on the planet but what the SEC has with CBS and ESPN is not far off.
2. The SEC no longer needs its own network: I talked to commissioner Mike Slive late Monday and he told me he was once convinced that an SEC network was the way to go. “I felt that way for about a year because I thought it was the only way we could get everything we wanted in terms of exposure and revenue,” said Slive, a former attorney and judge.
This new deal eliminates the need for the SEC to invest in its own network because ESPN is going to do it for them.
When the SEC representatives sat down to negotiate with ESPN they brought a laundry list of things they felt their own network could do for them. “Every time we would bring up an issue of something that we wanted, ESPN would come back to us and say ‘We can do that for you,’” Slive said. So the SEC gets the benefits of its own network without any of the risk. It will use ESPN’s massive infrastructure instead of having to build its own. “If we start our own network you’re looking at a 20-year commitment at least,” said Slive.
And here’s a question worth pondering. What if the Big Ten had asked ESPN to do this same deal? Would there be a Big Ten Network today?
3. The SEC hired Chuck Gerber: Who is Chuck Gerber, you ask? Gerber spent the past 15 years at ESPN where he, among many things, negotiated television contracts with conferences. But in April the SEC hired Gerber away from ESPN to serve as a consultant as the league prepared to renegotiate its deals with CBS and ESPN. It makes sense. If you are going to negotiate with the TV boys, you want somebody who has lived on that side of the fence who can get inside their brains. More importantly, you want to know what kind of money is actually available for properties like SEC football.
Working for the SEC, Gerber got a 15-year deal with CBS worth about $55 million per year. He got another 15-year deal with ESPN worth about $150 per year. I don’t know what Gerber got as a consulting fee, but he earned his money this year.
“I think I’m going to take the rest of the year off,” said Gerber, who still lives in Connecticut.
Slive’s senior staff, which includes Mark Womack, Mark Whitworth, Charles Hussey, and Charles Bloom, was also big in these negotiations. But hiring Gerber was huge.
FYI. When Gerber made it clear that he was ready to get into the consulting business, some conferences passed on him because he was just leaving ESPN. The SEC hired him BECAUSE he was just leaving ESPN. Decisions like that are why the SEC stays ahead of the curve.
4. This deal shows that college football is king: Other conferences should take heed of this deal because it shows the value of college football in a changing marketplace. While just about all other sports, including college basketball, are hurting when it comes to ratings, college football is more popular than it has ever been and is increasing in value.
Other than the NFL, the TV execs are discovering that college football gives them the most bang for their buck. Collectively CBS and ESPN are investing $3 billion into the SEC over the next 15 years. Those guys don’t throw around that kind of money on an asset that is going to decrease in value over time.
5. Keep the three Daves: I feel badly for my friends at Raycom, who are really the only losers in this deal. Raycom, which carries the 12:30 p.m. game, got squeezed out when ESPN decided it wanted to own all of the television rights not belonging to CBS. Raycom will still do the early SEC games this season, which is the last in the current deal. Next season ESPN Regional Television (ERT) will handle the syndicated package of games.
This is just one man’s opinion, but if ESPN is smart, they’ll keep the same broadcast team of Dave Neal, Dave Archer, and Dave Baker to do the early SEC games. In fact, the SEC should insist on it. Continuity is important, especially in the over the air package of games, which has played an important role in the growth of the conference on TV. It’s just something to think about.
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