Duke’s recent announcement that three games, including its Dec. 21 tilt against Michigan at Madison Square Garden, will be broadcast on Amazon’s Prime Video does not appear to be as rock-solid as it was initially presented.
In April, the school announced a landmark agreement with Prime Video, giving the streaming service broadcast rights for three Duke neutral-site games. Those games included a Nov. 25 meeting with UConn in Las Vegas, a Dec. 21 matchup with Michigan in New York, and a Feb. 20 contest with Gonzaga in Detroit.
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Not long after, however, Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports reported that the Big Ten believes it controls the rights to sell the Duke-Michigan game as part of a deal with the ACC to alternate control of media rights for neutral-site games played in “shared territory,” including New York City.
When Michigan and Duke met last year in Washington, D.C., the Blue Devils were designated the home team, which meant ESPN held the broadcast rights as part of the ACC’s media rights package (That was ESPN’s most-watched college basketball game in seven years). It was presumed then that the Big Ten would control the rights to this year’s matchup. The Big Ten’s primary rights holder is Fox Sports (which sublicenses games to partners such as NBC and CBS), and it is reportedly involved in this dispute.
Adding further complexity to the situation is the revelation that ESPN was involved in the Amazon negotiations, but neither the Big Ten nor Fox was. An IP lawyer who examined the Big Ten’s claim was skeptical, pointing out that Fox’s contractual relationship runs through ESPN and the ACC, not Duke or Amazon.
As Scott Dochterman of The Athletic noted on Wednesday, the final destination for this highly anticipated college basketball game remains in limbo despite Amazon’s proclamation.
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“We’re working through it,” Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel said this week. “I think it’ll be fine. What I’m looking forward to is playing the game.
“My staff said they made sure that everybody understood that it needed to go through Big Ten, and they had our media rights. What I didn’t know — and it’s fine — and they didn’t necessarily need to disclose, but I was surprised when it became three games that [Prime Video was] putting together.”
It’s unclear what the next steps are, what negotiations are happening behind the scenes to allow Prime to broadcast the game, or whether Fox and the Big Ten will eventually pull rank. In the meantime, there are certainly those who don’t think Prime’s plan will pan out.
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