Ohio State Football games might be on NBC soon

Ohio State football games have been found on the ESPN family of networks, including ABC, ESPN, ESPN 2 for the last few years in addition to the FOX family of networks. That’s because those are the two networks that paid for the rights to broadcast those games, and paid a pretty penny to do so.

There are rumors that NBC could make a push for the rights to Big Ten games soon. As of now, the rights expire in 2023. According to Front Office Sports, NBC is willing to shell out some serious cash in pursuit of the Big Ten to pair them with the broadcasting of Notre Dame games.

According to them, the Big Ten could command $1.1 billion a year in the open market. They are in exclusive rights with ESPN in terms of negotiating right now. FOX would keep at least some of the rights because of the Big Ten Network being owned by FOX.

Having Ohio State football games on NBC would be very weird. Ohio State takes on Notre Dame in the first game of the season next year, although I doubt that game would be on NBC. Even though ESPN just spent a ton of money for the SEC media rights, I would guess they’d do the same for the Big Ten.

We’ll likely find out where Big Ten games will broadcast within the next calendar year. It would surprise me if nothing got done until 2023 when the rights run out. Most of these things get taken care of plenty of time before deadlines approach.

The Ohio State football team won’t care where their games are broadcasted. They’ll be more focused on just winning games.