ESPN and the NCAA have signed a massive new media rights deal that is worth an average of $115 million per year over the next 8 years, as first reported by Ben Portnoy of the Sports Business Journal and later confirmed by the NCAA.
That’s an increase from the current deal which is worth around $40 million per year, and includes “at least 25% of that value” (around $28.75 million) in production and marketing costs assumed by ESPN.
The deal includes the exclusive global broadcast rights to all rounds of championship events in 21 women’s and 19 men’s sports. Among those are women’s basketball, women’s volleyball, women’s gymnastics, and women’s softball – sports that have seen dramatic increases in viewership over the last two years.
The NCAA says that thanks to the new deal, NCAA members will begin exploring revenue distribution units for the women’s basketball tournament. The championship game that featured superstars like Caitlin Clark from Iowa and Angel Reese from LSU averaged 1.7 million viewers in 2023.
“If you look at the numbers across most of these sports, they’ve all done far better over the past few years. And we fully expect the reason we got three-times (the value of the current deal) is because they’re all going to do far better going forward,” new NCAA president Charlie Baker said.
The deal includes stipulations that will produce more exposure for college athletes. That includes a requirement that the national championship game in Division I women’s basketball, women’s volleyball, women’s gymnastics, and the Football Championship Subdivision guaranteed to air on ABC each year, and some ABC exposure for baseball and softball championships.
It also includes selection shows for at least 10 of the championships on ESPN linear* networks.
Linear networks include cable and satellite television. In other words, referring to traditional television as compared to streaming services.
“What we had always said was we wanted the best deal for all of our championships. If you think about it, it’s (2,300) hours of programming, which over the eight years of the deal will take place in an enormous number of settings with a whole variety of challenges and on the ground circumstances that make this something where if you can get a production partner who’s willing to bite the whole thing off at a price that we believe is more than market competitive, we thought that was a better way to go.”
It also includes the international rights to the men’s Division I NCAA basketball tournament, which is domestically held by CBS and Turner through 2032 (which by itself is worth an average of $1.1 billion per year).
That deal and the new ESPN deal both expire in 2032.
The package of 21 women’s and 19 men’s championships that belong to ESPN includes men’s and women’s swimming & diving championships. ESPN has aired those championships primarily on their streaming platform ESPN+ in recent seasons, with a highlight package coming later on one of their cable networks (ESPNU last season). That presentation has usually included Olympic gold medalist Rowdy Gaines jumping in for the last few days of competition to call it live and record calls for the re-aired packaged version. Olympic medal winning diver Cynthia Potter also participates in the diving portion of the broadcast.
“ESPN and the NCAA have enjoyed a strong and collaborative relationship for more than four decades, and we are thrilled that it will continue as part of this new, long-term agreement,” said ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro. “The ESPN networks and platforms will exclusively present a record number of championships, including all rounds of several marquee events that, together with the NCAA, we have grown over time. This unprecedented deal also further strengthens The Walt Disney Company’s industry-leading commitment to women’s sports and will help fuel our continued growth, including in the critical streaming space.”
Events included in the new deal
- Men’s Championships – soccer, football (FCS, DII & DIII), cross country, water polo, indoor track & field, swimming & diving, wrestling, ice hockey, gymnastics, fencing, volleyball, lacrosse, outdoor track & field, tennis, baseball and basketball (including DII semifinals & DIII semifinals and championship).
- Women’s Championships – soccer, field hockey, volleyball (including DII & DIII), cross country, indoor track & field, swimming & diving, basketball (including DII & DIII), ice hockey, bowling, gymnastics, fencing, beach volleyball, lacrosse, outdoor track & field, tennis, softball and water polo.
- Also: men’s National Invitation Tournament (NIT) and Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament (WBIT); NCAA DI Men’s Basketball Championship (international rights).
New agreement extends relationship between ESPN and NCAA
Courtesy: NCAA
The new agreement adds to the already successful offering of NCAA events on ESPN each year – a relationship that began 45 years ago in 1979, the year of ESPN’s original network launch. NCAA championships will continue to benefit from the broad portfolio of ESPN platforms which includes broadcast and cable networks – ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNEWS, as well as ESPN+, the industry’s leading sports streaming service.
The agreement calls for the NCAA and ESPN to work together to maximize exposure opportunities on ABC and ESPN throughout the term. The national championship game in Division I women’s basketball, women’s volleyball, women’s gymnastics, and the Football Championship Subdivision are guaranteed to air on ABC each year, with additional ABC exposure guaranteed within the overall softball and baseball championships as well. The agreement also includes a guarantee that at least 10 of the championships will have selections shows distributed on linear ESPN networks.
Select rounds of NCAA championships will be exclusively available on ESPN+, which includes 24,000 college games each year spanning more than 20 conferences, effectively linking regular season and championship viewing for fans. Launched in April 2018, ESPN+ has grown quickly to more than 25 million subscribers, offering fans thousands of live events, original programming, and premium editorial content.
In total, more than 2,300 hours of championships will be presented on ESPN’s linear and digital platforms annually, with more than 800 hours of NCAA championships on ESPN linear networks each year.
The agreement also includes enhanced broadcast sponsorship and footage rights for ESPN across its full portfolio of championships and platforms.
Look for swimming on “The Ocho”…
I would just like them to have a little production value for prelims. If Beisel is doing sideline for finals, have her announce prelims and have a camera that actually follows the swimmers instead of a fixed camera on the entire pool. Give me splits for all 8 lanes in the corner of the screen for finals too and I will stop complaining about Rowdy*
*Just for the NCAA broadcast, not going to ever totally let that go
The fixed camera is superior for SCY in my opinion.
I can get where you’re coming from, but can we zoom in a little to just show the pool and not show windows up on the far wall? It was particularly egregious at GT in 2022.
Psych Sheet of tyr knoxville?
Nothing yet.
It’s out now.
https://www.usaswimming.org/docs/default-source/default-document-library/pre-scratch-psych-sheet—tyr-pss-knoxville.pdf
I asked ChatGPT how it affects swimming:
In this deal between ESPN and the NCAA, swimming is included as one of the sports covered. ESPN gets the rights to broadcast the championships for men’s and women’s swimming and diving as part of the package.
Before, ESPN mainly showed these swimming and diving championships on their streaming platform called ESPN+. They might have had some highlights on their regular TV channels too, like ESPNU. They brought in famous swimmers like Rowdy Gaines and Cynthia Potter to talk about the events.
Now, with this new deal, ESPN will continue to show these swimming and diving championships, but they’ll be able to show more of it on their TV channels, not just on… Read more »
And this has been a wonderful demonstration of the risks of using ChatGPT lol.
I could not see from this article, which looks and sounds primarily like an NCAA press release, how it makes any specific impact on college swimming. Could you do a follow-up on how we are affected? What part of the money, if any, is allocated to swimming & diving?
Any chance this leads to adjustment of the selection procedures for D-1 NCAA Swimming Championships?
Used to be that qualifying times were set and that was the basis for qualifying for the meet. Then one of the large Basketball contracts came round and supposedly funded essentially all attendees to the NCAA Championships in every non-revenue sport, including swimming, with the meet attendance/selection procedures becoming more based on cost certainty for… Read more »
What appears to be missing is the athlete’s cut. If this were a pro sport they would get half this revenue. The old argument that they are getting paid with a free education is going to be difficult since many are not getting substantive athletic scholarships.
ESPN’s (and other networks) use of uncompensated athletes to create content is showing cracks – FSU vs GA 3-63.
I would like to see the Michigan and Washington players refuse to play Monday unless they got paid half the gross. What would be the BCS’s leverage? Take away their “free eduction” and trinkets received as a bowl participant.
Collective bargaining is coming. It will be good for everyone, except the NCCA and Conference… Read more »
It will not be good for sports that do not draw ratings.
Not sure collective bargaining is good for sports like swimming as less money left over from revenue sports to help support Olympic Sports.
I think this is mostly short-sighted.
Its a nice soap-box to stand on, and demand equal pay but i think if they end up forced to pay athletes theyll just close most programs down cause they already lose money as is.
Sure bigger programs like OSU, Texas, Cal, UVA, Florida, UGA etc will still have funding, but forcing money to athletes of non-profitable sports will likely force >50% of teams to shut down.
I guess id rather have 300 teams that have a weak structure but still a structure, instead of 60 ‘super’ teams and everyone else falling to collegiate club teams.
Yeah, comparing it to pro sports doesn’t work. There are insanely-more athletes in college sports than in pro sports, and therefore significantly-higher administrative groups.
An NFL team has about 150 employees including players, coaches, medical staff, front office staff, etc. in football operations. So that’s about 1.5 people for every player. That excludes things like concession stands, security, ticket takers, etc.
I started counting the University of Florida’s staff directory and stopped when I got to 500. It’s probably around 600 on staff,servicing 560 athletes, which is a much better ratio. BUT college athletics departments are way more complex because they have 18 different kind of athlete to deal with. That means they need pool maintenance (though at many… Read more »
I don’t think it needs to fall apart, although the decision making of larger colleges mystifies me. But all of D3 manages to run sports programs without the intense expenses, coaches act as their own advertisers and peers agents.
The smaller schools operate at lower costs and with less extras but frequently train the same way. And obviously the coaches make less$. Maybe the lesson is that college swim coaches aren’t worth $300k to the university, just $80k and the same for expenses the whole team can generate. The true elites will make their money.
Correct.
But the bells and whistles are what takes “this is a nice hobby” to “we’re creating elite human performance machines with 100,000 seat stadiums and performance centers and nutrition scientists”. It also sort of ignores the point – if you cut that UF staff down to a D3 level, then everything is a money-loser and there’s no salaries for athletes either. A lot of that UF staff exists to make sure they bring in $250mm/year in revenue.
So if we’re all fine with going to a nationwide D3 model, then that works. But that’s an entirely different thing than saying the D1 athletics can operate the same way and it’s great and pay employees.
I could see the big schools seperating the major sports that actually generate income from the minor sports (including swimming). The major sports would them maintain the staffing and expenses. A sport would need to prove some $ value for the university to fund it.
Maybe swimming would make the effort to transition to better financial models, but I’m not hopeful. How often do coaches and staff say they just want to train their athletes not hire staff or agencies to do the other stuff.
I would love to know how Pro clubs handle this, does the ASU pro group have staff for out of water tasks?
A lot to discuss here but Ill stick to you last comment.
As a foreigner myself, I’ve often attributed the US’s consistent and diverse Olympics/athletics success across the board to be at least partially tied to the pseudo pro yet still supported student athletes. In most countries unless you are already elite, wont get sufficient support and/or its completely unfeasible to ‘go pro’, so you quit to purse a ‘normal’ career. Maybe the few that did get funding make it. But a lot of times its just a numbers game at the top. If there are 300 great swimmers for 1 country swimming hard and 50 for another country, in all likelihood, there will be a better swimmer out… Read more »
Man if the sport of swimming is still supported by the NCAA in 2032 I would be stoked. I just feel deep down that the super-conference football dominated thing is going to blow up Olympic sports as we know them in some mechanism that we haven’t seen/though of yet.
That’s awesome!
I wonder if swim teams will get a cut of the proceeds from airing the championships?
How will that money be distributed?
I doubt it, unless they ISLify it and start reaping in viewers.
$115 mil also isn’t that much. It goes fast.