Pete Thamel weighs in on concerns surrounding NBC, FOX battle over Big Ten championship game rights

ESPN’s Pete Thamel weighed in on the concerns of FOX and NBC battling it out over the Big Ten Championship Game television rights.

FOX and the Big Ten Network had quite the partnership for years. But with the new television deal adding NBC and CBS to the mix beginning in 2023 and fully converting in 2024, it’s a new era of watching Big Ten football.

Essentially, in order to get the new TV deal done, NBC was awarded a Big Ten football package and the rights to broadcast the conference championship game. Of course, Greg McElroy and Cole Cubelic questioned how that would come to pass already, especially given FOX’s ownership of the Big Ten Network.

“NBC has it,” Thamel said on McElroy and Cubelic. “They’re gonna have that vacant title game in 2026. Where the ambiguity lies there is that FOX technically owned the rights to the Big Ten Network, which is majority owned by Fox (which) owned the rights to that game. And that game was used as a lure to get this deal over the finish line and the (Big Ten) schools have to essentially pay Fox for that.

“So those types of things, the schools didn’t realize that and all of a sudden they seemingly got stuck with a bill. And they’re like, ‘wait a minute.’ $40 million in the grand scheme of $7 billion may not seem like a lot of money, but if you’re a pencil pusher in Minneapolis or West Lafayette or one of these places … none of these schools are making 10s of millions of dollars. Even I mean, you see all these numbers and budgets every year when they’re crunched in USA Today and other places. even the big bad bluebloods, they aren’t making hundreds of millions, right? So every million matters. There’s no wealthy person or wealthy corporation that just says that’s only $4 million bucks, no big deal. So it’s affecting the bottom line … I think there’s some concern about the process and how it got there and there’s some concern about financial accounting.”

NBC announced its game broadcast crew back in February for the Big Ten broadcasts. Live on Big Ten Saturday Night, the team of Todd Blackledge, Noah Eagle and Kathryn Tappen will bring the action into your living room, per a press release from NBC Sports.

“NBC Sports today announced its Big Ten Saturday Night college football announce team, featuring Todd Blackledge (analyst) and Noah Eagle (play-by-play) in the booth and Kathryn Tappen as sideline reporter,” the release read. “Every weekend from Sept. 2 through Nov. 25, the trio will call a Big Ten Football game, which will be broadcast on NBC and simulstreamed on Peacock. 

“Big Ten Saturday Night highlights an NBC Sports-record 33 college football games in Fall 2023.”