The last piece of the SEC's television package has now been put in place and boy is it a doozy. According to Sports Buisness Journal and and a 3pm Monday teleconference, the SEC and ESPN are expected to announce an agreement of epic proportions.
Big Money, Real Big Money...
According to the SBJ and also a story on the Atlanta Journal Constitution the deal is for get this...15 years and is worth $2.25 Billion dollars! Or for those of you counting about $150 million per year.
This is on top of the recently announced deal with CBS which will pay the league over $50 million per year. For those of us with math skills, that is close to $200 million a year, for College Sports.
Granted the four-letter word (ESPN) has mulitple media platforms for the league (ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN News, ESPN Classic, ESPN 36o and of course ESPN.com), just to name a few; but when you add in CBS, CBS College Sports and CBS Sportsline, you have a pretty large media footprint.
Left Out...
Left out in all of this appears to be long-time SEC Broadcaster Raycom. Known throughout the region for their Saturday game of the week, they now have been shut out. Again, according to the SBJ, ESPN, through their regional syndication network will handle selling the games to local affiliates.
In a way, that kind of sucks, if only for the tradition. Raycom has done the SEC games as long as I can remember and long before CBS jumped on board. They apparently didn't have the money to keep up with the big boys.
What it means...
To the casual fan, it probably doesn't mean much. Again, according to the SBJ, ESPN is working on the one problem that they have with distribution by getting ESPNU a better agreement with Comcast Cable. If they can work that out, then I suspect that most SEC fans will not miss any of the games. The one thing said by just about everyone covering the league is; whatever they do, they need to make sure that the games will still be seen in their markets, the SEC and its broadcasters want no part of an enraged Alabama fan or Tennessee fan who can't see their team play.
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