Paul Finebaum ‘flabbergasted’ by Big Ten’s media rights deal negotiation
The Big Ten Conference landed a groundbreaking media rights deal last August worth upwards of $7 billion involving CBS, FOX, NBC, and NBC’s Peacock. That deal was supposed to start on July 1, 2023, but is still yet to be signed due to some complications.
College football analyst Paul Finebaum joined the ‘The Marchand and Ourand Sports Media Podcast’ to discuss the holdup, but isn’t too concerned about the deal getting done.
“The only thing I can read into is that the previous commissioner, Kevin Warren, either was hasty or his lawyers were sidetracked because there’s never an explanation to why you can’t get these deals done once you have the agreement to do so,” Finebaum said. “I don’t think it’s a big deal.”
In late May reports revealed that new Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti still had some work to do on the conference’s media rights deal thanks to unfinished work left behind by Warren, who stepped down to become the team president and CEO of the Chicago Bears in January.
Apparently, over $70 million of the deal remains in flux, as Petitti is scrambling to get the deal done before football season. But despite the this bump in the road for the Big Ten, Finebaum is still impressed overall in what the conference has been able to accomplish this year.
“But I will offer this on the Big Ten, and I know those of us in the southern part of the world are supposed to hold our nose and turn our face. But I thought the deal last year we remarkable, I thought it was one of the better moments that we’ve seen in college sports,” Finebaum admitted. “To get Southern Cal to make that trek over to the Big Ten, to pull off an NFL like deal, I was flabbergasted at how well they did with it.”
Finebaum may have given the Big Ten their flowers, but still found a way to bring it back to his favorite conference at the end of the day.
“That takes nothing away from the SEC, which has an amazing deal as well, and I think it will get better with time, but that was a major coup. I think you just get expansion hungry, and whether it’s greed or whether it makes common sense, I can’t make a compelling argument what Oregon and Washington bring other than the brand value and I think that’s what it’s about,” Finebaum said.
Reports and rumors of the Big Ten adding more programs to their roster have and will continue to persist, but the conference’s main focus should be, and likely is, sealing their current deal. Due to lost revenue in the shortened COVID-19 season and the long-form contracts on the new TV deal not yet being signed, the $70+ million in question will likely have to be paid by each program in the conference.
The deal getting done may be inevitable, but Petitti and the Big Ten should ideally put a bow on it sooner than later, as the conference’s coaches and athletic directors have expressed discontent about the situation.