Network execs are gauging the financial hit a canceled Big Ten season would incurGETTY IMAGES
Network sources expect the Big Ten and Pac-12 to cancel their football seasons this fall and explore the feasibility of completing the season in the spring. Right now, though, TV networks are not getting clear guidance about what will happen. Just five days ago, the Big Ten released its football schedule on a BTN TV special that felt like a celebration of the conference. Today, networks had their legal teams poring over their college contracts to see what rebates might be coming. Finance teams started running every conceivable scenario to gauge the financial hit. Top network execs who have the best relationships reached out to their conference sources to trade information. All of this was happening while corporate bigwigs called to find out the latest. In short, nobody knows anything right now (John Ourand, SBJ Media).
ESPN WOULD GET HIT HARDEST: NBC NEWS' Dylan Byers writes a fall without college football "could deal a devastating blow to the game's media partners, most notably ESPN." One veteran TV exec warned that stakeholders should "get ready for the collapse of college football ... 'and huge implications for ESPN.'" LightShed Partners' Rich Greenfield "posits that ESPN could lose" $750M in ad dollars if the season were canceled outright. Standard Media Index estimates that college football accounted for $793M in advertising at ESPN and its related networks last year. The absence of games "could also hasten the decline of pay TV subscriptions" (BYERS MARKET, 8/11).
