FOX has officially acquired the rights to the Big Ten Championship game played in the first week of December.
Don't get too used to the Big Ten Championship game being played at 8:00 PM anymore. As of Wednesday, Fox has officially acquired the rights to the Big Ten Championship game that has been featured on NBC.
The relationship that college football fans, specifically Ohio State fans, have with Fox has soured pretty significantly. In an effort to compete with the likes of ESPN and CBS, Fox partnered with the Big Ten conference and decided that their time slot would be at noon.
With that initiative, they created Fox Big Noon Kickoff, and while in theory, this is a good idea to try and create a primetime spot, they ruined the big game feel in the best conference in America.
Furthermore, they have ridden the coattails of Ohio State as the Buckeyes have been at the top of NCAA Football for the past five seasons and seemingly are always playing at noon.
The best example of this disaster of a marketing plan is Ohio State's opening week game against the Texas Longhorns. The Buckeyes last year came into the season as the No. 2 team in the country, while Texas was No. 1.
Anyone with an ounce of common sense would schedule this game to kick off at 7:00 PM under the lights in primetime. Instead, you guessed it, it was the first game of the day in Week One.
Now, we will see the flip side of this in a few short months when the Buckeyes fly down to Texas and play the Longhorns in Austin, on ESPN at night, the way that it should be.
For now, the two leaders in the Big Ten will square off in that first week of December, and it will be featured on Fox.
The financials of the deal are fascinating. Fox is acquiring the game for somewhere between $45 and $55 million. To wedge the game away from other suitors such as Netflix and Amazon, Fox included additional regular-season game inventory in the deal.
As a result of the deal, Fox now owns the rights to the conference championship game for five of the next seven years, and CBS will have the other two.
It has yet to be seen if they will move the time of the game off of 8:00 PM, which it is right now. Regardless of when it is played, the Buckeyes hope to find themselves back in it in 2026 and are hoping for a better outcome than last season.
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