I've had some contacts at a couple of the networks over the years (won't disclose which ones as they have been very good sources for me personally), and I'm getting the sense there is a lot less certainty about how this next round is going to play out.
That said, the Tier 1 and 2 deal we are currently under was basically co-tier 1 between Fox and CBS, but as has been pointed out already CBS has basically pulled a majority of their broadcasts of the league (you know once Western came into the league
As I pointed out back in the fall, the American partnership has been a trial run that I think is without question going to be part of the next deal given how well that has worked so far for us. Hopefully, they don't go out of business, because I'm not sure their model is financially stable. Case in point take note when you watch one of the games on ASN how much of the ad time is given public service announcements. Those PSA's are almost always not paid slots. I hope and suspect that's largely due to being so new and not having time to sell those spots, but they have a lot of work to do there.
Going forward I would not be surprised to see a similar arrangement where we have a shared tier 1 deal between one of the networks and ASN. I don't believe ASN is tier 3 in the next deal. I believe they are Tier 2 at a minimum and possibly a co-number 1 tier. And that could be great for us in terms of access to being able to see our games but could be problematic for us on the financial end of that spectrum. Unfortunately, exposure is going to remain a huge problem for the league because most college football is watched on ESPN. A MAC game on a Tuesday night is going to draw higher ratings than if we're on FS1 in the primetime slot on Saturday night. I call it the bar effect. Every bar, frathouse, and Joe Blow College fan automatically clicks an ESPN channel regardless if they have a specific interest in the game or not.
So, I see either Fox or NBC bidding to become our Tier 1 though I view both as an enigma as they would rather show a UFC rerun or taped body building event rather than live college football games, which I just have a hard time understanding the rationale with that. And I believe NBC will want it but will not want to throw the money at it. Fox is much more willing to overpay and then stick a bunch of games on regional networks, so for that reason I suspect we get Fox as a Tier 1 with the ASN as a close Tier 2 though with little financial benefits tied to it and then we're probably looking at schools doing their own thing for any Tier 3 options. I don't believe there is going to be a market for that unless ASN slips down to that.
At this point I'm hoping we just maintain $1 million per school payout, which might be tough. The P5 vs. G5 nomenclature has really hurt us in that regard more than I was expecting a few years ago.