The Varsity<\/a> podcast, Puck sports reporter John Ourand said he believes the two sides \u201cwill work out a deal,\u201d and fans will see the first-ever 72 or 76-team NCAA Tournament this upcoming season.<\/p>\n\u201cIf I was a betting man, my bet would be that next year\u2019s tournament will be expanded to 76, and that the NCAA and the TV networks will work out a deal,\u201d Ourand said. \u201cBut I don\u2019t expect anything to happen for a couple of months. These are the issues that they need to work through. First, any expansion would put more games on the opening two days of the tournament, the Tuesday and Wednesday, the so-called play-in games. These games aren\u2019t going to create any new windows for the TV networks. And the fact is that the networks don\u2019t place a lot of value on the added four college basketball games, or however many there are. In this era of cord-cutting, traditional media companies need to find value in these kinds of deals. And if they can\u2019t see it, so be it, they\u2019ll walk.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow on the NCAA\u2019s side, they have an expectation that any expansion to the tournament will bring with it a healthy rise in their rights fee. But, and this is really important to note, neither CBS nor TNT Sports is contractually obligated to pay more if the tournament expands. But that doesn\u2019t mean that a deal is far off. Their current deal runs through 2032, and I\u2019ve seen this play out time and time again. Neither side wants to create friction for the next seven years. So look for the NCAA to sweeten its offer in other areas. For example, would CBS and TNT agree to pay a higher rights fee if the NCAA modifies some of the restrictions it has on how the networks sell corporate sponsorships around the tournament? That\u2019s a possibility. Are there any other sweeteners that the NCAA could provide to convince the networks to play along?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bottom line is that everyone likes each other; TNT, CBS, the NCAA. And from what I hear, the negotiations seem to be humming along. I fully expect both sides to reach an agreement, I just don\u2019t have a handle at what that agreement looks like yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
If Ourand is right, which he usually is, we might\u2019ve already seen the last 68-team tournament. It seems like this deal will come down to what ancillary benefits the NCAA can scrounge up for CBS and TNT. Otherwise, there is little reason for either network to shell out more in rights fees when it doesn\u2019t have to.<\/p>\n
But given there are still seven years left on the current media rights deal, maintaining a healthy working relationship, according to Ourand, seems to be a high priority. That might mean paying a little extra in rights fees to stay in the NCAA\u2019s good graces, and maybe get some sweeteners in return.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NCAA president Charlie Baker revealed last week his preference to expand the NCAA Tournament from 68 teams, to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70855,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,15900,217,16627,7456,231,772,1400,1544],"class_list":{"0":"post-70854","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-charlie-baker","10":"tag-college-basketball","11":"tag-john-ourand","12":"tag-march-madness","13":"tag-ncaa","14":"tag-ncaa-basketball","15":"tag-ncaa-tournament","16":"tag-ncaab"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114610459531230000","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}