It’s long been anticipated that the annual Ohio State – Michigan football game would be moving to Fox following the network’s acquisition of the Big Ten’s Tier 1 rights last summer (the deal begins in 2017-18), as Fox now has first pick of Big Ten games and that game tends to draw the largest audience out of any in that conference, but that move now appears official.
It was predicted in our report on the new TV deals last June and in CBS’ report at the same time, mentioned again (this time as a done deal) in Anthony Crupi’s Advertising Age piece last month on Fox’s upfront preparations, and then actually confirmed by the network at their upfronts Monday, with quite a bit of promotion from Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh and Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer (who appeared on a video call there for some reason) as well. Here’s the slide of their football schedule:
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Having that game switch networks is a big deal, and that’s why Fox outbid ESPN for the Tier 1 rights ($240 million annually versus $190 million). Both networks will show the same amount of games each year (25 football and 50 basketball), but Fox gets the first pick every year (ESPN gets second, Fox gets third and so on), so they can take Ohio State – Michigan in perpetuity for the life of the contract (presuming they’d want to, but it seems unlikely anything else will come close in terms of ratings). The Tier 1 rights aren’t just about Ohio State – Michigan, of course; they also include the Big Ten championship game and a few other notable things. But grabbing this matchup is a huge part of why Fox was willing to pay more for what’s mostly the same number of games.
Interestingly enough, Fox also managed to get both Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh and Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer on board for a video call at the upfronts to help sell this game to advertisers. And Harbaugh really went full tilt:
Jim Harbaugh more willing to sell out for a laugh than Ohio State’s Urban Meyer.
— Rick Porter (@rickporter) May 15, 2017
https://twitter.com/ezwrites/status/864218839092953093
Meyer did fire off an interesting tweet, though:
So, they got Meyer to promote Fox too, just maybe in not as an over-the-top way. And it’s interesting that Harbaugh would go all-in for Fox, which he doesn’t work for (and only some of Michigan’s games will be shown there; plenty may wind up on ESPN or ABC too). But hey, Fox went all in for him with the Harbus, long before they even won the Tier 1 Big Ten rights. Perhaps turnabout is fair play.