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Media & Entertainment Law

: Sports Biz

NCAA Discusses Expanded Men's Basketball Tourney with TV

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The NCAA currently has an 11 year, $6 billion deal with CBS to broadcast the men's basketball tournament. It has an escape clause that allows it to terminate the agreement after the 2010 Final Four. According to an article in the Sports Business Journal, the NCAA has begun the process of shopping the tournament to broadcast and cable networks to determine the interest level in the event it decides to open up bidding. It is also trying to gauge the impact of moving the tournament to cable.

Also under consideration and discussion with the television networks is an expansion of the tournament to 96 teams. While the NCAA is not committed to expansion, it is favored by coaches for obvious reasons. Expansion, under current NCAA thinking, would mean an additional week added to the tournament with the top 32 teams receiving byes.

Theoretically, an expanded tournament should result in a larger TV contract as there will be more games and more selling opportunities for broadcasters. Whether that would actually result in additional revenue to any one school would be determined by how many conference members reach the tournament in its expanded format. The power conferences are only likely to favor expansion if they believe that their relative position in the tournament will be maintained so that they will not suffer any revenue loss. The public is likely to favor an expanded tournament in general and particularly if the additional teams are weighted more heavily in favor of the mid-majors and lower level conferences to enhance the possible Cinderella effect.

Whether CBS wants to commit an additional week to the tournament remains to be seen. ESPN, which has made no secret of its desire to land the tournament, would presumably welcome an additional week, seeing little problem in selling the inventory and seeing it as an additional reason to pass along a higher subscription fee to the cable operators.

So folks, the next few months promise to be interesting in Indianapolis as the NCAA looks to make the deal that funds its operations while without an Executive Director. One would think the deal would wait for an Executive Director to be named but since there is a deadline for opting out of the CBS deal, it would depend on how long the NCAA takes to find Myles Brand's replacement.

Full post as published by Sports Biz on December 08, 2009 (boomark / email).