Summit League tabs Collegiate Sports Management Group for conference media rights strategy

The Summit League is not waiting by the sidelines to attack its next round of media rights discussions.

The conference announced Tuesday morning that it has brought on Collegiate Sports Management Group to help formulate its media rights strategy under new commissioner Josh Fenton. This move comes less than a month after the Big Ten shook up the college sports landscape with the addition of USC and UCLA. Now in position to cash in on a major new television contract, the Big Ten could be looking at a deal that brings in north of $1 billion a year.

Fenton and his league’s current Tier 1 media rights deal is with ESPN, with most games airing on ESPN+. The Summit League was one of the early adopters of the streaming service, with games being show starting at the 2018 launch. The conference also has a current Tier 2 deal with cable company Midco.

“The Summit League is continually focused on enhancing the experiences for and connectivity with both our student-athletes and passionate fans,” Fenton said in a press release. “We look forward to working with trusted leadership at CSMG in a media rights evaluation process with the goal to provide broader exposure to the successes of Summit League student-athletes, while building stronger fan affinity with our devoted students, alumni and fans.”

CSMG is an integrated sports and entertainment media company focused on esports and traditional sports. This agreement with the Summit League marks the company’s eighth Division I league partnership.

Denver, Missouri-Kansas City, Nebraska-Omaha, North Dakota, North Dakota State, Oral Roberts, South Dakota, South Dakota State, St. Thomas and Western Illinois make up the Summit League’s 10 full-time members. The conference sponsors nine men’s sports and 10 women’s sports.

Possibility of Summit League digital network

Before taking the job with the Summit in April, Fenton previously served as commissioner of the National Collegiate Hockey Conference for nine years. During his time with the hockey-specific league, he helped establish NCHC.tv, a digital network.

In an interview with The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead in March, Fenton was open about the possibility of creating a Summit League digital network.

“ESPN is very powerful across the country. As part of that relationship we’ve got a smaller linear component — they’ll be here for the championship games Tuesday night,” he said. “And then we have a digital component through ESPN+. But not everything gets pushed to ESPN+ so we can’t look at that as the digital home for the Summit League, so to speak.

“… We have to try to figure out where we’re going forward with the overall media landscape. Is there something we can do linear nationally? Linear regionally? And maybe we’ve found a bit of a sweet spot with Midco. Last, in combination with the linear side, is the digital component. I’m not naive enough to believe that we’re going to have all the Summit League games on an ESPN linear channel because that’s just not going to happen.”