US college sports conference the Ivy League has appointed the Lagardere Unlimited agency to aid its search for a new broadcast rights deal.
Pay-television broadcaster NBC Sports Network currently holds the rights to the Ivy League under a two-year comprising the 2012-13 and 2013-14 seasons. The agreement is set to expire at the end of the current school year.
Scottie Rodgers, the Ivy League’s associate executive director for communications, told the PressConnects.com website that the league will begin by talking with NBCSN in hopes of striking a new deal.
Lagadere will assist in contract talks, with the league also enlisting Donald Dell, former star tennis player at Yale in the 1950s who went on to a professional career before founding sports marketing firm ProServ, to make its case to the networks. Rodgers said that the importance in having the league on television cannot be overestimated.
“Just because a game may involve two teams in the league, when it’s about any two teams, it’s also about the Ivy League brand, no matter the sport,” he said. “The story that’s being told through that game, and as a secondary conversation around that game, is about the brand of the Ivy League and Ivy League athletics.
“It gets the message out to folks around the country and around the world. People can watch those games live outside of the US footprint via our digital network. The fact that there can be a Cornell club in London, for example, watching a game live at whatever time it is over there – they can do that and that’s big.”
The Ivy League comprises Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University.