In April, we estimated that college football could generate 2034-35 rights fees in excess of $14.8 billion, up from $3.9 billion currently, should a “single seller” negotiate them, and make other programming changes. That’s how the NFL and NBA operate (also see our NFL programming piece in SBJ, Sept. 1, 2025).

Colleagues asked, “What about college basketball?”

It’s complicated. The most valuable rights, the men’s and women’s basketball championships, are already licensed by a single seller: the NCAA. Even without a formal analysis, we believe that many similar ideas would apply, growing rights fees meaningfully:

College basketball reaches every town with great rivalries and generational, passionate fans — 23,000-plus men’s and women’s regular-season D-I, plus 150 March Madness games — over five months. A single seller would identify the most attractive regular-season games (including the biggest rivalries) and place them on the most widely distributed/viewed broadcast and streaming platforms. Imagine seasonlong sponsorship and data rights, packaging scale with a true tentpole championship event.

Aggregating the content, a single seller could package it differently. All programming not included in the national TV agreements, as with the NBA, could be licensed for pay streaming (a college version of “League Pass” plus “RedZone”), local TV and potentially “multi-plexed” on conference networks.

Unlike football, regular-season basketball is already played on most days of the week, so there is little scheduling improvement opportunity beyond focusing on........

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