NBC Universal confirmed to Sports Illustrated, and will eventually officially announce, a huge get in acquiring exclusive coverage of English Premier League Soccer coverage from the United Kingdom. NBC won the rights over FOX and ESPN by bidding three times more than the latter networks, with a 250 million dollar deal. NBC plans to air coverage EPL on all of its network platforms including NBC, NBC Sports Network, Spanish coverage on Telemundo and online coverage on NBCSports.com. With continuing Major League Soccer coverage (they are currently in a 3 year deal), NBC are looking to draw a considerable amount of soccer viewers by increasing national and international coverage. With FOX gaining coverage of the next World Cup, ESPN's foothole in futbal is fast fading.
Also, NBC are now in serious negotiation to acquire rights to the Big East Conference. The conference have apparently refused to negotiate with ESPN on a new rights deal and will allow their negotiation window close, putting the their coverage in the open market. The Big East turned down a huge extension from ESPN late last year, that followed up with the exodus of several major schools with Syracuse, Pitt and Notre Dame, sans football, to the ACC and West Virginia to the Big 12. Though the Big East will remain a power conference in basketball (despite Connecticut academic issues coming to a head), the football conference will be challenged to be competitive with only Louisville, Rutgers and Cincinnati as viable football powers. But NBC are going to looking to add the conference to its stable of college basketball coverage including Atlantic 10, Mountain West, Colonial Athletic Association and Ivy League conferences.
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