The Texas Longhorns’ 20-year, $300 million deal with ESPN is bad news.
According to the Arizona Daily Star, the University of Texas has signed a 20-year, $300 million agreement with ESPN to launch a television network that would show Longhorn sporting events and other material.
A press conference to officially announce the acquisition is set for Wednesday afternoon.
The agreement involves Texas’ licencing and marketing partner IMG, with a large portion of the proceeds going back to the institution.
According to the Austin-Statesman American newspaper, the network pact will not replace the Big 12’s present partnerships with ESPN-ABC and Fox.
President William Powers of the institution of Texas stated, “We want to define what it means to be ‘the’ public university.” The task is to develop new money streams to fund our objectives.”
When a particular institution or university develops such a contract, I, as a general fan, am not surprised. With this sort of setup in place, broadcast schedules are often determined by who has the deal, rather than which games are best or most significant for conference races or national rankings.
Furthermore, the extra visibility generated by such a contract would undoubtedly have an influence on recruitment. In some ways, this allows the university, in this case Texas, to acquire an unfair advantage in wooing high school and junior college recruits. While ESPN’s apparent objective is not to provide a partial and biassed recruitment edge, this is the most likely outcome.
In addition to the extensive coverage, the institution and athletic department will receive a massive financial boost. According to Clint Shields’ Fiscal Notes – March 2009, “The University of Texas at Austin’s fiscal 2009 athletic budget, for example, tops $125 million, making it one of the largest athletic budgets in the nation.”
According to a June 2009 research in the Birmingham Business Journal, the Longhorns rank first in football income and total revenue based on 2007-08 data. Texas earned $72.95 million in football revenue and $120.28 million overall.
If you’re a Longhorns fan, you’ll love this. Your squad receives additional funds to improve itself. It’s a fantastic opportunity to see more of UT.
I have no objections to people or organisations profiting from their success. I simply don’t believe it is in the best interests of college sports for a network like ESPN to promote a specific university.
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