(no SEC Channel?)



UF, Sun Sports ink 10-year $100M deal

Orlando Business Journal - by John Ourand and Michael Smith Street & Smith's SportsBusiness Journal Staff Writers

The University of Florida and Fox's Sun Sports have signed a media rights deal that is not only one of the most lucrative in the country, but also could end the likelihood of an SEC channel being created any time soon.

The deal will pay Florida's marketing arm, the University Athletic Association, roughly $10 million a year for the next 10 years. Florida, one of the Southeastern Conference's most marketable schools, was one of the few major colleges that handled many of its marketing and media rights in-house.

The deal also could be a sign that an SEC channel -- modeled after the Big Ten Network -- is not in the offing, industry analysts speculated. While the deal itself would not preclude the SEC from creating a channel, its timing, just weeks before the conference picks its new TV partners, suggests that such a channel is unlikely.

The deal will give Sun Sports, a regional sports network that reaches 6 million homes in Florida, a bundle of multimedia rights that includes everything from local TV, broadband and radio to on-site signage and corporate partnerships.

The rights include tape-delayed football, men's and women's basketball, baseball and Olympic sports. One of Sun Sports' most profitable shows is "Breakfast with the Gators," a Sunday morning replay of the previous day's football game.

Florida, the 2006 and 2007 NCAA basketball champions and the 2007 national champs in football, has had its local TV rights with Sun Sports in the past, but this deal represents a much broader relationship.

To help manage the Gators' property, Sun Sports has brought in IMG College, created when IMG acquired Collegiate Licensing Co. and Host Communications. The overall value of the deal is believed to be just less than the 13-year, $112.5 million agreement that IMG College recently guaranteed the University of Nebraska for its rights, making it among the most lucrative college rights deals.

The SEC is set to announce its new television contracts in August, industry sources say. By all accounts, CBS will retain the broadcast portion and ESPN will retain the cable portion, with ESPNU and ESPN360 also getting rights that were previously reserved for syndication partners.

The new TV agreements are expected to double the SEC's revenue from its previous contracts, another reason why the conference is not expected to pursue its own network.

The deal between Florida and Sun Sports "could be an indicator that an SEC network is no longer in play," said one TV analyst, who asked not to be identified. "The timing certainly is interesting, isn't it?"

The SEC has the ultimate authority over the local rights of the schools, so it could conceivably commandeer those rights if it decided to launch a network. But the schools that already enjoy significant revenue from their local TV arrangements -- Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky and LSU -- might be hard-pressed to see the value in a conference network.

Those local TV packages typically include tape-delayed or pay-per-view football games, as well as less-attractive nonconference basketball games.

Some TV analysts believe that schools with their own local TV packages should resist the creation of a network that would take over ownership of those rights.

If the SEC decided to move forward with a network, it still could claim the Gators' local TV rights, but it's not likely that Florida, Sun Sports and IMG College would finalize such a landmark deal if it might require changes in a month.

The Florida-Sun Sports deal takes yet another school off the board that had handled some of its own marketing and media rights in-house. Multimedia rights holders will now turn their attention to Ohio State, one of the few remaining schools that has not bundled its rights into a single deal with an agency.

The Florida deal also is important for Fox, marking the company's first foray into multimedia rights at the university level. IMG College has been in the rights business for more than 30 years and owns the rights to schools such as Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas and Nebraska.

As the largest public university in the nation, I think this is a good move for Florida fans. The Gators have a large contingent of fans just about everywhere.

TerryD Wrote:(no SEC Channel?)



UF, Sun Sports ink 10-year $100M deal

The rights include tape-delayed football, men's and women's basketball, baseball and Olympic sports. One of Sun Sports' most profitable shows is "Breakfast with the Gators," a Sunday morning replay of the previous day's football game.

FYI...UF's new $100 Million deal with Fox's Sun Sports will include live sporting events, in all sports "except" football.

Here's a more detailed story on their contract and why is worth a lot more than FSU's (which due to their ACC Hoop Contract, teams can't show even live non-conf games...as even those games are controlled by the conf).

OrlandoSentinel.com
College Football UF
Florida Gators land 10-year $100M TV deal with SunSports
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/or...2070.story

Jeremy Fowler

Sentinel Staff Writer

8:29 AM EDT, July 15, 2008

"I think UF probably has the most comprehensive regional TV agreement in the country."--Cathy Weeden, Sun Sports Senior Vice President/General Manager The University of Florida's $10-million-a-year deal with Fox's Sun Sports could be more about the Gators' brand expansion than a potential Southeastern Conference Network down the road.

Sun Sports has done business with the Gators since 1996, but its newest 10-year contract extension -- easily one of the most lucrative for a university and a regional network -- gives the channel substantial TV, Internet, radio and corporate sponsorship rights to the Gators.

Tom Stultz, senior vice president and managing director of the sales and marketing company IMG College -- which helped Sun Sports broker this deal -- said regional TV programming such as this shouldn't affect any plans for an SEC channel because so many TV entities already coexist.

CBS and ESPN are expected to continue broadcasting SEC games in 2008, but talks of a conference network could be in the conference's long-term plans. An SEC Network would probably be owned by the conference and showcase all of the conference's sports, sort of a mirror image of the Big Ten Network, which owns 51 percent of its channel to Fox's 49-percent share.

"There's the CBS deal, ESPN, Raycom Sports, Fox Sports, rights-holders like us -- we all have to work together anyway," Stultz said. "We wouldn't stop the conference from doing whatever is in its best interest. We couldn't do anything about them creating their own network, we'd just have to react."

IMG College also put together a similar regional agreement with the University of Nebraska worth $112.5 million over 13 years.

Cathy Weeden, senior vice president/general manager of the Florida-based network, said her channel was simply continuing business with a Gators program that carries allure after a 2006 national football championship and back-to-back men's basketball titles in 2006-07.

This is also a way for the University Athletic Association, which handles UF's in-house marketing, to outsource its workload.

"I think UF probably has the most comprehensive regional TV agreement in the country," Weeden said. "We've always had an extensive TV relationship with them, but we felt it was necessary to aggregate it because the Gators are a no-brainer."

Sun Sports still covers Florida State under an agreement that began in 1988, though the commitments are smaller than the UF deal. Florida State can't sell the station live men's basketball games because of conference licensing, Weeden said, while the Gators can provide non-conference games.


Sun Sports will broadcast a handful of University of Miami basketball games through the ACC.

Sun Sports, which reaches six million homes in Florida, will broadcast 600 hours of live and tape-delayed UF programming from football, men's and women's basketball, baseball and Olympic sports.

Stultz said he works closely with the SEC and still doesn't know if they plan to move forward with a channel in the fall of 2009 or beyond.

If a conference channel infringed on Sun Sports' promised amount of coverage, officials might have to renegotiate a new deal, Stultz said.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/or...2070.story

PS. Believe UF also had an agreement with Sun Sports/Fox for pay-per-view non-conf football games that are not picked up by any of the SEC Networks.