The possibility of a new college football RedZone channel being launched has hit a hurdle, according to a report from Front Office Sports.
Fox is unlikely to license its college football programming, select Big Ten and Big 12 games, to ESPN to make a comprehensive College Football RedZone channel unless it is lumped into a sizable ownership portion of the channel, per FOS.
Shortly after the NFL acquired a 10 percent equity stake in ESPN earlier this month, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell openly discussed the possibility of expanding the NFL RedZone programming to introduce a college football RedZone channel.
Much like the NFL’s version but on a larger scale, a college football version would bounce between each game to find the most important moments, plays and storylines across the 10+ college football games that are played simultaneously during each television window on Saturdays.
However, the hurdle to this being a comprehensive channel which has access to all games is that ESPN only has the broadcasting rights to SEC, most of the ACC and some Big 12 games, the latter of which it splits with Fox.
In order to be able to include all games on a college football RedZone channel, ESPN would need to strike deals with Fox, NBC (which has a portion of the Big Ten’s games along with Notre Dame) and CBS, which also broadcasts Big Ten games after losing the SEC to ESPN starting in the 2024 season.
Fox, NBC and CBS are entering the third year of a deal which has the three networks combining to pay the Big Ten about $1 billion a year in order to split the broadcasting rights for Big Ten games.
-Field Level Media
