ED GOREN

You can go back to when Bill Paley was running
CBS—back then it was the Tiffany Network—content
was king. Well, that hasn’t changed. In fact it’s become
even more obvious in the world of television sports
rights in 2011, and will carry over for many years to
come. When we started Fox Sports in 1994, our initial
rights deal with the NFL was for four years—that was
the norm back then. Today, we’re seeing rights deals
running for 10 years and more. And the competition
with companies placing more and more sports content
on national cable will become even more aggressive.
The bottom line is that what you think is an expensive
rights deal today will look like a bargain tomorrow.