Fox Sports now has a second sport, acquiring the network television rights to the National Hockey League yesterday to add to the National Football Conference rights that it purchased in December for $1.58 billion. Once again, Fox outbid CBS for a major sports property.
Fox will pay $155 million over the next five years to broadcast games on up to 20 dates, starting with 11 in the upcoming season, according to people familiar with the agreement. Fox's hockey schedule will start with the All-Star Game on Jan. 21, followed by regular-season and playoff games. It will show up to three Stanley Cup Finals games, all in prime time.
But Fox will have a major task ahead. While the N.F.C. is the most valuable chunk of pro football's TV rights, N.H.L. broadcast rights have been devalued for decades, the victim of minuscule ratings. ABC averaged a meager 1.7 for the five games it telecast in 1992-93 and the six games it broadcast in 1993-94.
ABC paid nothing for those 11 games. ESPN, the league's exclusive cable TV rights holder, purchased time on ABC to broadcast the games.
Although Fox and CBS had been in contact with the N.H.L. for several months, formal negotiations moved quickly this week before culminating Thursday night in the Fox bid, which eclipsed CBS's estimated $150 million offer.
Continue reading the main story"We placed a value on the property and we were not willing to go any higher," said Susan Kerr, a CBS director of programming. CBS officials are said to be angry because they believed their bid would lock up the deal, said people familiar with the talks.
CBS believed it could promote the N.H.L. well within its existing programming, which includes the National Collegiate Athletic Association men's basketball tournament, college football (starting in 1996), the 1998 Winter Olympics and "Late Show with David Letterman."
Fox and league officials were unavailable for comment, as they awaited the deal's approval by the N.H.L. Board of Governors. Most league officials are in Finland, attending the first Nike-N.H.L. International Challenge. A news conference is scheduled for Tuesday.
The addition of Fox broadens hockey's TV reach at a time when the National Hockey League has begun a rise in popularity, spurred by the Rangers' Stanley Cup championship, the stepped-up mass marketing of teams in nontraditional hockey cities such as the Mighty Ducks in Anaheim, Calif., the sales success of licensed hockey merchandise and the growing appeal of roller hockey.
Perhaps the biggest factor was the appearance of Fox, a fourth player on the network bidding scene, which wants sports properties and is willing to pay substantial money for a sport that networks have continually shied away from. Despite the N.H.L.'s low ratings, Fox is attracted to hockey's appeal to the 18-to-34 age group, to which much of Fox's prime-time schedule is directed.
The Fox deal comes two years after ESPN agreed to a five-year, $80 million contract that is entering its third season.
Earlier this week, the league made a deal with ESPN that allowed for greater network exposure, opening the way for the Fox contract.
In return, ESPN will most likely have its deal extended beyond the fifth year and be allowed to show its games in markets where they have been pre-empted by local cable channels like the MSG Network and SportsChannel. Rangers, Devils and Islanders games broadcast by ESPN are seen outside New York, but blackout rules have prevented it from showing their games locally.
Continue reading the main story