COLUMBUS, Ohio — Editor's note: This article was originally published in the Ohio Capital Journal.
This Saturday, Ohio State kicks off its college football season against the University of Akron. And whether you’re rooting for the Buckeyes or the Zips, you’ll be able to watch the game on CBS. To the average football fan, that’s really all that’s important. But in an increasingly fractured media landscape, that’s looking less and less certain.
Last year, Ohio State’s football game against Purdue ran exclusively on the NBC-owned streaming service Peacock, to the chagrin of many fans and a pair of state lawmakers.
State Sen. Bill DeMora, D-Columbus, and state Rep. Brett Hudson Hillyer, R-Ulrichsville, have filed legislation aimed at prohibiting universities in Ohio from signing exclusive presentation deals with streaming services and requiring schools to provide students with free access to athletic event broadcasts.
DeMora first filed the measure in February, and Hillyer submitted his companion legislation earlier this month.
Big deals
Televised sports, and football in particular, is one of the most reliable draws for viewer attention. Broadcast networks, cable channels, and increasingly, streamers, are all vying for the rights to live sports to bring sell spots to advertisers or bolster their subscription numbers.
And the deals are exceptionally big business. According to a 2021 audit of Ohio State’s athletic department, football media rights accounted for more than $30 million in revenue — bowl game revenue tacked on another $8.7 million. Men’s basketball brought in another $10.3 million.
A year later the Big Ten athletic conference inked a blockbuster 7 year, $7 billion deal that wrapped in broadcast arrangements with Fox, CBS, and NBC. As part of that agreement, Peacock got exclusive rights to several football games every season through 2029.
Lawmakers’ gripes
In a committee hearing to introduce his bill, DeMora claimed the mantle of “the Ohio Senate’s resident super fan,” and criticized “the Big10’s greed.” The measure would apply to all 14 of Ohio’s universities, but there’s little doubt that the primary motivation for the bill is Ohio State. DeMora argued viewers with an antenna or a typical cable package have had access to every OSU game since 1997, but when they played Purdue last year, viewers had to shell out an additional $5.99 subscription fee.
While that’s annoying for the average viewer, DeMora argued, it can be brutal for sports bars that rely on games to sustain their business.
“If you don’t have the Ohio State game on, then there’s nobody in your bar,” he said. “I mean when Ohio State plays football, if you don’t have the game on, no one’s going to be there,”
For the Varsity Club, situated near Ohio Stadium, Peacock licensing costs $3,600. The bar is a local institution and a magnet on game days, so they’ve likely got the margin to handle those charges, he argued, but that’s likely not true for many other bars.
In addition to last year’s Ohio State game, he noted Bowling Green and Toledo’s rivalry game was on the streaming service ESPN+.
“If you were not at the game in person,” he argued, “you couldn’t watch the game unless you paid extra for it.”
He argued even the NFL grants exceptions for local broadcasters to show games in their home market, and it would be relatively simple to give local stations a similar carve-out.
Separate and apart from the business case, DeMora argued the product just didn’t warrant the expense. He complained the stream was “laggy and pixelated” with horrible sound quality. He described hearing from one bar owner who had the game on four different TVs.
“And each one of them was five seconds later than the other TVs so they listened to the same thing four different times,” he described.
DeMora also questioned why students who are paying tens of thousands to attend the school have to pay anything at all to watch the game on TV. To that end, he and Hillyer’s measures require universities to provide free access to any contest that gets broadcast. The university would have discretion over how exactly they provide that access, though.
Regardless of whether DeMora and Hillyer can get their fellow lawmakers on board, there’s nothing they can do about streaming-only Ohio State games this season — or anytime soon. The current Big Ten media rights agreement runs through the 2029 season, and the proposed legislation only applies to future contracts. Still he suggested there’s nothing like a fresh outrage to focus one’s attention.
“Now that football is starting again,” he argued, “if Ohio State is stuck on a streaming service again, my colleagues are going to realize Ohio State fans wrath from not watching a game.”
This year, like last, Peacock is slated to carry nine games. They’ve only announced three so far, and at this point, Ohio State isn’t on the list.
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