This shows you what a uphill battle we
Have with sports networks when fox needed
Games just not our games.

FOX Continues Support for Big 12 Expansion with G5 Teams

There was recently an article from the Sports Business Daily in which the authors claimed that both FOX and ESPN were "pushing back" against the Big 12 in regards to expansion. The article claimed that the two major sports networks felt that adding teams from the Group of Five would dilute the product the conference was putting out.

This could not be further from the truth.

FOX has been one of the leading proponents of Big 12 expansion over the last year as the network tries to get more college sports to air across its family of channels. This has been discussed repeatedly in the past, because FOX Sports only has the tier 1 TV rights to the Big 12 and Pac-12. Meanwhile, ESPN has tier 1 rights to the SEC, ACC, partial Big Ten, BYU, The American and many others.

This means that the only football program east of the Mississippi under contract with FOX for tier 1 television rights is West Virginia. FOX wants more product to air in the Eastern time zone. The network wants more product to air, period. The other option is to pay ESPN for content to air and no business wants to pay its competitor for their product.

ESPN has had some issues with Big 12 expansion, but that is mostly due to the targets the Big 12 wants.


The Big 12 is not in a position to poach teams from a Power Five conference. The Pac-12 is under contract with FOX, which means the league would be biting the hand that feeds if it looked west. The ACC has a new grant of rights that puts all of its schools off limits and the idea of the Big 12 luring a Big Ten or SEC team away is honestly just laughable.

The only option is to poach teams from the Group of Five. FOX wants the Big 12 to do it for content and the league wants to do it so it can survive.

Link to article here

Quote:ESPN has had some issues with Big 12 expansion, but that is mostly due to the targets the Big 12 wants.

Quote:So the truth is that yes, ESPN would like the Big 12 to avoid poaching its hottest Group of Five property - the AAC - or take away BYU, which has a buyout clause in case a Power Five comes knocking.

Following this guy's logic, if the Big 12 took UNT & FIU then ESPN would be all in.

(08-02-2016 11:20 AM)Hilltop75 Wrote:  This shows you what a uphill battle we
Have with sports networks when fox needed
Games just not our games.

my view on it is that Fox realized it needed more than just football games, it needed P5 games. So do you get into a bidding war over CUSA property or B1G property? If I think I can get all of B1G, why should I negotiate guaranteed saturdays with CUSA?

(08-02-2016 11:20 AM)Hilltop75 Wrote:  There was recently an article from the Sports Business Daily in which the authors claimed that both FOX and ESPN were "pushing back" against the Big 12 in regards to expansion. The article claimed that the two major sports networks felt that adding teams from the Group of Five would dilute the product the conference was putting out.

This could not be further from the truth.

Think the cat is out of the bag now and this here, is an attempt at damage control.

FOX wanted our games but they wanted them on weeknights. C-USA Presidents said no.

(08-02-2016 01:32 PM)BeliefBlazer Wrote:  FOX wanted our games but they wanted them on weeknights. C-USA Presidents said no.

Thursdays/Fridays or Tuesday/Wednesday? Big difference IMO, looking back our presidents should have taken deal if first set...

(08-02-2016 01:38 PM)WKUFan518 Wrote:  

(08-02-2016 01:32 PM)BeliefBlazer Wrote:  FOX wanted our games but they wanted them on weeknights. C-USA Presidents said no.

Thursdays/Fridays or Tuesday/Wednesday? Big difference IMO, looking back our presidents should have taken deal if first set...

Nope, we "Gomer"d that situation up. Now the networks know they can get G5 games for peanuts. The other G5's can thank us for that after they renegotiate.

I got the feeling Fox wanted at least some Tuesday/Wednesday. Looking at FS1 ratings, that's a hard sell, but money may have been worth it knowing what we know now.