Big Ten Network-Comcast Deal to Be Announced This Week

Let's have a parade.

The Fanhouse has told you this at least thrice before, but here it is again: the Big Ten Network and Comcast are about to make a deal. So says everybody. This one's from the Chicago Tribune:

Comcast and the BTN are prepared to put nearly two years of bitter negotiations aside to announce a long-term partnership, the Tribune has learned.

"For all intents and purposes, it's done," one source close to the negotiations said Sunday. Technically, it's not done. But sources expect the deal will be completed and unveiled this week.

(Link via Spartans Weblog.) What's more, the Big Ten Network will provide on demand content including classic games and condensed "snap to snap" replays.

The price? somewhere between 70 and 80 cents, which is some way off the $1.10 that was bandied about as the BTN's asking price during the contentious PR battle waged last summer but also way, way higher than the 25 cents a Comcast vice president told me was the most they'd pay for the network.
There remain three cable holdouts in the Big Ten footprint -- Time Warner, Mediacom, and Charter -- and the current speculation has those three falling into line before another football season drives subscribers to satellite and the telco's rapidly expanding fiberoptic networks. If that does happen, the BTN will be on basic cable in every household in their footprint and broadcast nationally on DirectTV and DishNetwork, and at a price that's a significant portion of their no-doubt-inflated initial asking price.

After a year of nonstop mockery from the chattering classes it may be hard to comprehend... but didn't the Big Ten win? There was a year of pain for fans as football and basketball games got shuffled onto a network nobody got, but if these deals fall into place this will be the net result:

• every Big Ten game on network TV is nationally televised thanks to the conference's new contract with ESPN and the "reverse mirroring" clauses inserted
• every other Big Ten game can be found in HD on satellite, nationwide
• a huge number of Big Ten basketball games are now available across the entire footprint instead of just locally, and...
• the Big Ten is making money hand over fist on this frankly marginal content.
  

Several dozen journalists will probably owe Jim Delany an apology in September.