The since quite a while ago reputed rights bargain between the SEC and ESPN, which would move the SEC’s ballyhooed round of the week package and the SEC Championship to ABC, was formally reported on Thursday.
The SEC will proceed on CBS through the 2023-24 season prior to moving over in the late spring of 2024 and proceeding through (gulp) the 2033-34 season.
ESPN will apparently pay a shocking $3 billion more than ten years for the package. It will end simultaneously as the 20-year deal ESPN signed with the SEC in 2013 that brought about the launch of SEC Network.
The deal is revolved around the top-level SEC football package, ensuring the best conference game every week to ABC. That game had recently been on CBS, which prompted ESPN getting the second-best game every week. This ensures that Georgia-Florida, Alabama-LSU, and the Iron Bowl will be on ABC every year beginning in 2024.
Of note: some non-gathering football and men’s ball games will be moved to ESPN+ next season, as this note shows.
A ton can occur in four years, particularly in the games media world. For hell’s sake, four years prior, Jon Gruden was as yet in the Monday Night Football corner, neither Verne Lundquist nor Vin Scully had resigned, and Thursday Night Football was broadcasting on three organizations, none of which were Fox. Despite whatever occurs throughout the following four years, when we get to the fall of 2024, we realize which network the best SEC round of the week will be on – and it’s not the organization that has housed the game since the mid 1990s.
Concerning CBS, they’ve actually got four more SEC Championship games to air and three all the more full football seasons, so they’re not turning the lights out yet. In any case, with the SEC leaving in 2024, will the organization go to another meeting? The main gathering that could verge on filling the SEC’s shoes would be the Big Ten, whose rights bargains are up after the 2022-23 season. Could CBS gazump either ESPN or Fox for those rights? If not, it would be left with the possibility of either the Pac-12 (finishing after 2023-24) or Big 12 (terminates after 2024-2025) which could give the stock, however maybe not the nature of either the SEC or Big Ten.
