US college sports conference the Atlantic 10 has agreed a new nine-year rights deal, from 2012-13 to 2020-21, with the NBCUniversal media group and new eight-year rights agreements, from 2013-14 to 2020-21, with the CBS network and pay-television sports broadcaster ESPN.
The domestic rights deals include live coverage of the Atlantic 10 men’s and women’s basketball competitions and will double the level of national exposure for the tournaments from 2013-14, the conference said.
Under the deal with NBCU, cable-television channel the NBC Sports Network will show six games during the 2012-13 season, then 25 regular-season men’s games and three women’s games per year, as well as the quarter-finals of each Atlantic 10 basketball tournament, for the remaining eight years of the contract.
ESPN will show up to 30 basketball games per year on its main channel, second channel ESPN2, or the ESPNU college sports channel, including the finals of the men’s and women’s championships.
The CBS Sports Network cable-television channel will show up to 54 games per year, including the semi-finals of the men’s and women’s championships. ESPN has sublicensed coverage of the men’s championship to CBS Sports since 2010.
All three of the deals include possible coverage of the conference’s Olympic sports events.
Unlike the current cycle, the deals do not include sponsorship or digital rights, which means Atlantic 10 will have “flexibility in its active discussions to determine future platforms for its inventory,” the conference said.
Financial terms were not disclosed.