CBS announces kickoff times for pair of 2024 games, Big Ten Championship Game
CBS will be carrying an array of big-time Big Ten football matchups during the 2024 season as the league enters a second season of its multi-partner broadcast deal. And the network announced a pair of matchups that will occupy the 3:30 slot on Saturday afternoons that had been synonymous with SEC football for years.
The first will be a Sept. 14 showdown between Purdue and Notre Dame in West Lafayette kicking off at 3:30 p.m. EST followed by defending national champion Michigan hosting USC a week later on Sept. 21.
The Big Ten Championship Game will also be aired on CBS, and will kick off at the 8 p.m. EST slot that the league has occupied for years.
As part of the new media deal, the championship game will rotate among the league’s broadcast partners — FOX, CBS and NBC. FOX aired the game in 2023, the first year of the new deal, and it now moves to CBS for the second season.
More on the Big Ten’s new media deal as it enters Year 2
“The Big Ten Conference announced today that it has reached distribution agreements with CBS, FOX, NBC and NBCUniversal’s Peacock,” the league announced in mid-August of 2022. “The breadth of new partners, in addition to Big Ten Network (BTN) and FS1, will place conference football, women’s and men’s basketball and Olympic sports student-athletes on the biggest stage and provide fans with the most exciting matchups across traditional over-the-air linear television and direct-to-consumer streaming.
“These landmark media rights agreements are the most comprehensive in all of college sports and further strengthen the tradition of the Big Ten Conference.”
According to Pete Thamel of ESPN, the new seven-year agreement will “begin July 1, 2023, and run through the end of the 2029-30 athletic year.”
Additionally, the college football insider writes the Big Ten is “set to bring in more than $7 billion” over the course of the agreements.
“Specific terms were not disclosed, but a financial windfall won’t come immediately, according to media sources,” added Thamel. “The CBS payout in Year 1 of the agreement is lower since it still will be carrying SEC games during the 2023 season, and will air only seven Big Ten contests that fall.
“But the Big Ten’s per-school distribution will slope upward in Year 2 of the deal, when new members USC and UCLA enter the Big Ten. Revenue will rise substantially beginning in Year 3.”
The landmark news comes after it was reported that ESPN was walking away from the negotiating table when it comes to the Big Ten, as the worldwide leader wasn’t willing to reach the demands of the conference.
“Big Ten Conference football will dominate Saturdays, beginning in the fall of 2023 on the largest broadcast platforms from morning to night, with FOX at Noon ET, CBS at 3:30 p.m. ET and NBC in Prime Time,” added the Big Ten. “With the addition of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of Southern California (USC) in August 2024, the conference, its student-athletes and member institutions will reach the broadest audience in the country, coast-to-coast, including the top three media markets in the country in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.”