It's TV day here at SportsBiz. The latest TV news is word of the NHL's new TV agreement. The current agreement with NBC and Versus expiring this year paid about $70 million a year from Versus and no rights fee from NBC. The NBC deal was a time share arrangement. When Comcast, the owner of Versus, took over NBC earlier this year, there was no more interested and concerned observer than NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman. There may have been no luckier person either.
After bidding from Turner Sports, Fox and ESPN, the NHL decided to stay with Comcast in return for a 10 year, $1.9 billion deal, with most of that coming from Versus. Comcast no doubt was emboldened to outbid ESPN in part because it sees the NHL as the foundation of a new sports channel it is attempting to build at Versus, with the help of NBC Sports, that will rival ESPN. Of course, that's a huge and very expensive uphill battle. The outline of that battle could take place very soon - in six weeks the International Olympic Committee will take bids on the next two to four Olympics, something that NBC has owned since 2000. Adding interest to the bidding will be Comcast's response to the loss of $233 million by NBC on the Vancouver Games. Will they still feel the need to keep the Games at almost any cost, as a platform for Versus (soon to get yet another name, "NBC Sports Channel" perhaps) and to keep it out of the hands of ESPN, or will the Comcast decide to only play if the numbers work and they are assured to make money, in which case the Games will be shown on the ESPN family of networks? Stay tuned - it will be an interesting spring.
