Zach’s Reacts: Mountain West Media Rights Deal

We have a deal! The Mountain West has reached a media rights deal that will earn the conference a pretty nice pay raise over the next few years. After many years of being an afterthought for the most part with ESPN – including putting MW games on ESPN3, late-night ESPNU, or, if you’re lucky, a late-night game on ESPN2 – the Mountain West will have games on Fox Sports and CBS Sports instead of ESPN. While there will be some negative comments that you will hear from people, such as “Why would you leave ESPN?”, I believe that this is a really good thing for the MW and could prove to be a very important day for the conference and its universities. Here are some of the things that stand out to me with this new media deal:

Show me the MONEY!:

It wasn’t that long ago that the amount of money a school would make from the media rights deal with ESPN was based on how many games you had on ESPN and ESPN2 for football, which made it very difficult to balance budgets, due to not being able to put an exact number at the beginning of the year. This ended up being good for schools with good football programs because it meant that they would be making a good amount of extra money over the minimum that was allocated for each university. But for some schools, such as New Mexico, there would be years that they wouldn’t get any of the extra money from ESPN. This makes it very difficult for those schools to make commitments on the macro-level of their athletic departments. With the new deal, the Mountain West will reportedly be making $45 Million a year, so while we don’t have the exact number for each school (Boise State and Hawaii have different terms), the schools will be making around $4 Million a year. This is a huge bump after years of making just over $1 Million. While that doesn’t seem like a huge difference for an athletic department, as it would pay for about a third of a Nick Saban, it is a huge deal for departments that are the size of UNM’s. This influx of cash will help with decisions that would have been impossible to make under the old deal.

Changes are coming:

So how does this influx of cash affect UNM specifically? First, for some context, $2.8 million is almost 1/15 of the current athletic department budget, so just by adding that amount to what currently exists would increase the overall budget by a little over 6%. That’s not nothing. Here are a few of the things that can change with this added money.

  • Higher salaries for both head and assistant coaches, which can increase the quality of coaching that UNM can compete for
  • Facility upgrades
  • Student resources
  • Better travel
  • Better advertising (which would hopefully draw more fans in)
  • More sports or more resources for Olympic Sports

Lots of interesting options for the department to explore. And while I don’t know it would have saved any of the cut sports had this come earlier, I hope that there are at least conversations about them returning in the future. There is a huge chance for growth as a university, the question will be if UNM can use these new resources well to take that next step.

No more ESPN?:

For the last 30 years, ESPN has been the marque sports network, so if you weren’t playing on ESPN, you weren’t getting the full amount of coverage as you wanted or needed. Things have changed in the last couple of years, as the amount of streaming has grown and the rise of Fox Sports and CBS Sports and given more teams a platform to be seen. While there is a part of me that is sad to see the era of ESPN and the Mountain West end, we have to be honest with ourselves about the coverage that they gave us over the last 20-years. While there have been some great moments for the Mountain West and ESPN, they were never going to give the Mountain West the prime time slots, which makes it difficult for the national audience to watch your product consistently. I think the 2004-2005 Lobos are a perfect example of this. They had a very good team with a first-round draft pick but ended up with a 12-seed in the NCAA Tournament, largely because most people didn’t get the chance to watch the team play. If your TV deal isn’t giving you great time slots, it’s probably time to find a new deal.

Two different deals:

While it does come down to a $45 Million deal, this is really two different deals with CBS Sports and Fox Sports (FS1), each paying a good chunk of money to the Mountain West for the rights to their games. While there will be some that don’t like having two different deals, this could be a very good thing, because it provides flexibility. You aren’t tied to just one media group, which will allow more opportunities for prime-time games, which would increase coverage overall. These particular media partners are appealing to me, as the MW will be one of the major players for both channels, rather than being somewhat of an afterthought with ESPN. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a shift of when games happen during the week and had games at 6 PM Mountain and 8 PM Mountain for the second game of a doubleheader. If the Mountain West can find two nights during the week to make this happen, they could have all of their marque games at a good time and on a really good channel. I am really excited to see what the Mountain West is able to do with this deal.

20 Game Schedule:

With the news of this deal, it is very possible that we will see a 20-game MW Basketball schedule very soon. You may be for or against this idea, but with CBS Sports and Fox Sports has the rights to games, they will want the most out of their money. One way they will be able to do this is by adding two games to the conference schedule, ensuring that you will get two games featuring the best teams in the league. I also think that it is very possible that the Mountain West will get rid of the mirrored scheduling and keep the Mountain West Women’s Basketball slate at 18-games, which I think would be good for both sides. There are options for what the Mountain West can do, and that is very exciting.

Cover mistakes:

As we have seen the last handful of years at UNM, you really aren’t able to cover up bad hires and buyouts, which makes it very difficult if not impossible to balance a budget. While I don’t want UNM or any university to make a habit of having to buy out coaches, this added influx in cash gives you the chance to balance a budget if you do get in that position. This is a really good thing for the Mountain West, because it will allow you to move on from a bad hire or toxic situation earlier than you would have been before this deal.

Closing thoughts:

While there will be things that we will have to get used to with the new media rights deal, I believe that we will be able to call this a win. While the Mountain West didn’t get the money the AAC got from ESPN, I will take the games being on CBS Sports, FS1 and FS2 over ESPN+ every day of the week. This is also something that can grow and become an even better deal. This is just the beginning of a new era of the Mountain West Conference and it is a very exciting time to see what these schools are able to do with the added money and resources.