TIGER RAG NEWS SERVICES
The Southeastern Conference office concluded its four days of spring meetings on Thursday in Miramar Beach, Florida, with a firm no toward a specific part of the bipartisan bill from Congress called the Protect College Sports Act.
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and the presidents and chancellors of the 16-team league do not want to pool the league’s media rights with third parties and other conferences.
“The SEC has been intentional through years of thoughtful planning and decision-making in strategically positioning itself for future media negotiations,” a joint statement from the conference office and the various league presidents and chancellors from the league began. “The conference must retain the ability to act in the best interests of its membership. As such, the SEC does not support assigning the media rights to a third party and remains firmly committed to independently conducting its own media negotiations.”
Thank you, very much.
The bill by Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) includes a reworking of the Sports Broadcasting Act to allow various conferences to pool their TV rights. But the SEC just started two years ago a $3 billion media rights contract for 10 years with ESPN and Disney that has ABC and ESPN as exclusive broadcast networks for SEC football and men’s basketball.
“We have folks working and analyzing things,” said Sankey, who said he finished reading the 111-page bill on Wednesday night. “Does the bill provide us with the necessary protections? We need to figure out what it means for college athletics broadly and what it means for the SEC in particular.”
The SEC welcomes revisiting other media rights strategies.
“The SEC recognizes and appreciates the many ongoing discussions regarding potential, system-wide improvements to ensure the future success of college athletics,” the joint statement said.
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