The school is in talks with Time Warner, Comcast, and AT&T to distribute Longhorn Sports Network, a first for a characteristic association

By Tom Lowry

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In what would be a capital for community sports upon television, the University of Texas is planning to launch its own 24/7 sports network, signaling a further move about niche programming on cable and satellite.

Officials from the University of Texas have teamed up with the college sports unit of IMG Worldwide, a talent agency and licensing company, to negotiate distribution on Time Warner Cable (TWC), Comcast (CMCSA), and AT&T (T) in Texas and possibly in bordering states, says Pat Battle, a senior vice-president at IMG College. IMG has an agreement with the Austin (Tex.) school, what one. is part of the Big 12 Conference, to oversee its trademark licensing, marketing, and multimedia rights.

If the passage, tentatively named the Longhorn Sports Network, gets done the fix, it would be the first time a university has created its own sports network seeking broad assignment. "Texas has such an incredible fan sorry and such great content from one side all its sports programs," says Battle, "that we touch a network like this will have a actually being following." A spokesman for DeLoss Dodds, the UT athletics director, said he was unavailable for make notes.

While the network will show a range of sports, from baseball to track and field, it currently does not have the rights to show all the Longhorns’ enormously prevalent football games, which raises doubts about the compassionate of kind of every audience the reticulated could attract.

Sports are a huge pull in Texas, with college open-air sports and melody as the main attractions in its largest seminary of learning’s hometown. With a storied history in football and the largest university sports batch in the country, at again than $120 million, Texas reportedly operates one of the most profitable university sports programs. The University of Texas football team is currently ranked No. 4 nationwide, having been knocked out of the top spot by a Nov. 1 loss to Texas Tech. Texas plays unranked Baylor at home on Nov. 8.

Over the past decade, community sports has expanded its reach greatly on television, instigating from the broadcast networks to cable outlets such as ESPN, to regional sports networks like Fox, to such college-themed networks as CBS College Sports and ESPNU, to, more recently, networks established by college conferences themselves.

Now Texas is taking the lead in breaking out on its avow to capture revenues exclusively. But is it economically feasible to support a university-only sports network, particularly when it has become much harder to procure the necessary distribution on cable to make a benefit? "I put on’t know how far down the tree you can take this action," says Mike Trager, founder of TV sports consultancy The Trager Group. "The return pie for college sports stays essentially the same, but they lay away slicing it up. The question because of Texas is, ‘Can you influence the receipts and division for that specific of a nook?’"

Even while sports offerings have grown on TV, cable and satellite operators have become more resistant to paying for the escalating rights to show sports, their most expensive category of programming. When the Big Ten Conference tried to get division deals for its network in 2007, it met huge resistance, particularly since it wanted to charge distributors a dollar a month through subscriber (ESPN charges on the eve $3). Cable and follower operators balked till the Big Ten lowered its excellence to about 70¢. The Big Ten Network now has distribution to about 35 million homes. Comcast offers it on its expanded basic service in those states with Big Ten schools and on its digital sports tiers elsewhere.

IMG’s Battle says Texas would seek distribution only on digital sports tiers, for which subscribers settle an extra fee-simple. The university has not reached any deals with distributors yet, but Alex Dudley, a speaker for Time Warner Cable, with 1.8 million subscribers in such Texas cities as Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio, called the talks "actual productive" thus far. A broadband offering of the network or of some programming on the network is under consideration as well, says Battle.

A big sticking point for distributors is experienced which sports and which games the literary institution network will be able to show—mainly the super-popular Longhorn football games. The Big 12 has rights deals in quest of broadcast television with ABC (DIS) and for cable by Fox Sports Networks (NWS), so many of the Texas football games air on those outlets. Fox sometimes sublicenses those rights, so Big 12 games moreover current of air on other cable outlets, such for the reason that ESPN and Versus. Battle says he and university officials are generally in talks with Fox about buying back rights to some Texas games. As it stands after this, the literary institution’sitting sports network would be able to air as many as four football games, says Battle. Clearly, they wouldn’t be the most competitive matchups, since ABC and Fox would indigence to do honor to those. The literary institution could offer Fox, or the cable outlets, an equity stake in the network as an incentive to complete the ongoing deal talks. Battle says that hasn’t been ruled out as a possibility.

Battle, whose father was the successful University of Tennessee football coach Bill Battle, is not deterred by the challenges. He’s hoping the network will launch next fall and perhaps get to be a model for other large universities. Of course, Battle is not a disinterested sharer. IMG College represents the rights for 15 Division I universities, including the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where college sports might be just as much of a that which binds us to the practice of righteousness as it is in Austin.