Thursday, September;>
Page 3B
I Thursday, September 28, 2000
THE BATTALION
r .S. wrestl
Ins down
'p medal
('DNEY (AP) - k
ner did the unthinkable
ed Alexander Karelins:
ct — and won agoldnie,
illy nobody in the
lit he could win.
irdner, an American w
• title to his name, net?
medalist, ended Kaie,
ot three Olympic gold nul
e Russian’s Ll-yearimh
by winning the Olympi
eavyweight wrestling;
1 -0 on Wednesday
'hen did 1 think I c
Mxiut 10 minutes ago "Gi
id. "I kept saying, ‘1 tit
think 1 can.’ Butitwaaiii
as over that 1 knew Km;
relin is universally cm
he greatest Greco-Ror*
erof all time, a man who
lost in internationalcmi
who had not conceds
n 10 years,
d Gardner beat him,®
crowd that inc
ent Juan Antonio Sai
who had come to pp
n his fourth goldmedal-
he will never get.
hat does this mean?H;
e best wrestler in the his
stling — a wrestler who
ecu beat." U.S. national(ii |
nan coach Steve Fraser
upset was so stunning
y no one in the crow# ;
/ Exhibition Hall, ouisiiu
■r's immediate family,rai
it. Nor could Karelin.ul:
■r said, “Mumbled a (f
it me in Russian towards
lon't know what he said
's so big and nasty, it’s!
e pushing you,” Gardi:
"m not as strong as him,?'
ase. I knew ifllethimpu;
and, get even twoonte
>n me, it was over.”
Gardner, a formerUnive^
Nebraska wrestler, id
onto the footballtfiaro'oi
wrestle full-time, Said h
d he had a strategy
Karelin's dreaded lifts
;s pressure. He even exp' 1
ave some fun with him
Fox lands TV
baseball deal
Execs pay $2.5 billion for rights
5
fall 2O0D
9,
•rs
swinG
NEW YORK (AP) — Get ready
to call Fox “The Baseball Channel.”
Fox wrestled exclusive TV rights
to major league baseball’s postsea
son and All-Star game from 2001-
2006 as part of a package worth
about $2.5 billion.
The‘network will also retain its
regular-season game of the week.
“We at major league baseball
could not be happier with the result,”
baseball commissioner Bud Selig
said Wednesday. "They have been a
good partner and an innovative pro
ducer of our games.”
With the new Fox contract aver
aging about $417 million, and the re
mainder of ESPN's regular-season
contract averaging $152 million, the
two deals give baseball an average of
about $570 million per season, or $ 19
million for each of the 30 teams.
The $570 million represents an in
crease of 50 percent from the $380
million baseball averaged the past five
years from its
contracts with
ESPN and its
five-year deals
with Fox and
NBC, which ex
pire after the
World Series.
Baseball
originally hoped
to capitalize on
the recent trend
of escalating
sports rights fees
by tripling its
TV contracts.
NBC and
ESPN, which
like ABC is
owned by Walt
Disney Co., de-
clined to match
Fox’s offer for their postseason
packages by Tuesday’s deadline.
NBC, which will lose baseball for
the second time in 12 years, broad
cast the sport from 1947 through
1989, often as baseball’s sole na
tional network, then renewed the re
lationship in 1994.
ESPN, has broadcast baseball
since 1990, began an $800 million,
six-year regular season contract this
season, with about $40 million at
tributed to this year.
Gaining the relative ratings boost
from the league championship series
and World Series meant more to Fox
than the other broadcast networks.
Fox had the biggest prime-time
ratings decline of the four major net
works during the 1999-2000 season.
Its average prime-time audience of
8.97 million was down 17 percent
from the year before, according to
Nielsen Media Research.
“With the postseason year in, year
out, it’s going to be a huge advantage
for the entertainment people,” said
Fox Sports Television Group chair
man David Hill.
“The World Series is the No. 2
championship event in sports in
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We at major
league baseball
could not be happi
er with the result.
[Fox has] been a
good partner and
an innovative pro
ducer of our
games.”
— Bud Selig
Baseball commissioner
terms of promotion. You couldn’t
want a better promotional platform
for your entertainment programs.”
The last time one broadcast net
work owned the full baseball pack
age was 1990-93, when CBS lost
hundreds of millions of dollars in a
$ 1.057 billion deal, partly because of
a steep decline in ratings and partly
because of a national recession.
“That was in a galaxy a long, long
while ago,” Hill said.
Under the expiring arrangement.
Fox and NBC split the league cham
pionships and alternated televising
the All-Star game and World Series.
Now Fox will have the TV rights to
all of those events for six seasons, in
addition to its regular-season rights.
That means Fox will not have to
worry about another network under-
pricing it on selling commercials. “We
will be able to maximize advertising
rates,” Hill said.
Of now having a single broadcast
network partner,
Selig said, "It’s a
great thing, sta
bility. I really be
lieve that having
one partner over
the next six years
brings stability
and a certain
cross-promotion
that I think will
be very, very ef
fective.
“The more
we talked about
it the more we
were convinced
having one part
ner was in our
best interest.”
The extra
load of first-
round playoff games could be eased
by shifting some to cable channel Fox
Sports Net.
In June, Fox rejected baseball’s
demand that the network increase its
yearly payments from $120 million
to $360 million, while NBC declined
to up its payments from $80 million
to $240 million.
Those decisions allowed baseball
to try to sell its rights on the open
market. CBS and ABC weren't inter
ested in buying the rights at the prices
baseball was offering.
The pattern of rising rights fees
began in 1997 when the NBA
agreed to four-year deals with NBC
($1.75 billion) and Turner Broad
casting ($890 million) for $2.64 bil
lion — more than double the
league’s previous deals.
In 1998, the NFL doubled its take
by agreeing to contracts with CBS,
Fox and Disney totaling $ 17.6 billion
over eight years.
In November, Fox joined with
NBC and TBS to win the bidding for
NASCAR’s TV rights. That deal is
worth about $400 million a year,
roughly four times what NASCAR
made under its previous package.
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