The University of Oklahoma is close to a carriage deal with the Fox Sports Oklahoma and Fox Sports Southwest US regional cable and satellite broadcasters which will put the university’s sports network in 8.6 million households in the United States, according to local news website NewsOK, quoting SportsBusiness Daily.
The deals will give it greater reach than the Longhorn Network, operated by rival University of Texas, although Oklahoma’s deals are reported to be shorter and worth much less than Texas’s 20-year, $300m (€232m) agreement with pay-television broadcaster ESPN. The University of Oklahoma network will have greater exposure than the Longhorn Network in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and New Mexico.
The University of Oklahoma plans to broadcast more than 1,000 hours of sporting content per year. The service will be branded as the Sooner Network – the university teams are nicknamed ‘the Sooners’ – or the Oklahoma Network. The programming will include at least one American football game per week as well as men’s and women’s basketball matches and Olympic sports. A university-branded website will also be established and will offer live streaming.
The network will have access to “third-tier” rights covering events that are not broadcast by the university’s primary network partners, ESPN and the Fox network. ESPN and Fox have rights for the university’s team events via a deal with the Big 12 conference, of which the university is a member.