Ebersol Says No Super Bowl, Other Major Events to Cable

Sort of related to VERSUS, this piece with Dick Ebersol from MediaPost:

As the Final Four goes to TBS and the Bowl Championship Series to ESPN, it begs the question of whether all premiere sports properties are en route to pay TV? ESPN chief George Bodenheimer stoked the fire recently, saying he “certainly wouldn’t rule it out” as far as the Super Bowl coming to his network.

But Ebersol, who heads NBC Universal’s sports and Olympics programming, sought to assure regulators that the recent past is not prologue.

With the FCC and Department of Justice reviewing the proposed Comcast-NBCU merger, Ebersol (and others from NBCU) effectively promised that the transaction would not bring the World Series to Comcast’s Versus network.

Instead, according to a meeting summary, the NBCU group indicated the merger would bolster NBCU’s ability to acquire sports rights and “would not result in the migration of such major sporting events away from broadcast television.”

That appeared to include prime Olympic events and marquee NFL games.

Advertisement