ATLANTA — Calling the Southeastern Conference "the gold standard of college athletics," CBS has announced that it had signed an unprecedented 15-year extension to show the league's football and men's basketball game through the year 2023. Financial terms of the deal were not released.
The current contract between the SEC and CBS was scheduled to end after the 2008 season. The two parties have been negotiating throughout the year.
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This new deal with CBS, however, does not eliminate the ongoing possibility of an SEC television network. That won't be determined until the SEC announces the remainder of its television contracts with ESPN and Raycom. That announcement is expected later this month or in early September.
Mike Aresco, the vice president for programming at CBS, said that his network and the SEC talked about several different options when it came to the length of this new contract.
"But at the end of the day the comfort level is so great and the trust is so great that we decided to lock this in for the long haul," Aresco said. "This is a great deal for both sides."
CBS has an 11-year deal with the NCAA to televise the men's basketball tournament. This 15-year television deal is believed to be the longest in the history of college sports.
But in this new deal CBS gets the right to pick the first football game during weekly during the regular season. In the previous deal ESPN got the first pick a few weeks out of the season.
CBS will do one prime time game per season, leaving Saturday nights for ESPN.
The deal also includes certain digital and wireless rights. Aresco said CBS will considering streaming some games on the internet.
Contracts like the new one with CBS are the reason that the SEC continues to generate record revenue each year. In May the SEC announced that it was sharing $127.2 million with its 12 members. Of that total, $50.6 came from television rights for regular-season football. In 1990 the SEC shared $16.3 million in revenue with its members. The largest part of that growth has been from the explosion of televised football.
To compare, the ACC's television deal with ESPN/ABC, renegotiated in 2004, is for $258 million and runs through 2010. The Big Ten renewed its deal with ESPN/ABC in 2006 for 10 years and it has the potential to be worth $1 billion.
Tony Barnhart writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. E-mail: tbarnhart AT ajc.com
