NBC Universal President & CEO Steve Burke is “angling for sports deals” less than three months after Comcast Corp. took control of NBCU, and is “pushing a big shift in how the entertainment company would use them,” according to Vascellaro & Futterman of the WALL STREET JOURNAL. Sources said that Burke is “scouting out new deals in college sports," as well as with the IOC and NHL. NBCU will bid for deals “only when coverage of popular sporting events can be split across the combined company's cable-TV and broadcast assets.” Comcast has “vowed it will do deals only if it can make money on them,” but “how many it can win with that approach, even while leveraging its cable networks, remains unclear.” Burke's “first big push is a play for rights to the Pac-12 college sports conference.” Sources said that the Pac-12 Conference is “seeking a 10-year deal worth $220 million a year, plus a commitment to launch a regional sports network.” Sources added that execs “see a deal as a potential rainmaker that will improve the Versus sports network and allow the company to collect carriage fees for a Pac-12 network.” But Vascellaro & Futterman note the “bigger test of Comcast's strategy will be rights to the next set of Olympics.” Sources said that Comcast execs “have determined that investing in the Olympics makes financial sense only if they can acquire all the Games from 2014-2020, instead of just the 2014 and 2016 events, to give it enough time to try to negotiate multiple fee increases with pay-TV companies” (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 4/15).
