A pair of Ohio legislators are pushing a bill to stop college games from being telecast only on streaming services. The focus is on O$U football games that are available only on Peacock, but the prohibition would apply to all Ohio universities and all sports. That means MAC games might not be shown only on ESPN+, which means they might not be available to fans on TV at all. Here is an article about the legislation: https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2024/08/28/as-college-foot... /

While I'm for making games available to fans who don't have access to or can't afford cable or internet, the legislators apparently haven't thought about the legislation's potential affect on fans of non-B10 schools. If it weren't for ESPN+, there would be few televised MAC football games in September and October, and practically no televised MAC games in other sports. This would be detrimental to those who, for one reason or another, can't attend games. It doesn't look like the legislation will go anywhere in the lame duck session of the General Assembly after the election, but it's likely to come up again next year.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think the important word here is that the bill keeps schools from signing ". . .exclusive presentation deals with streaming services. . ."

I don't think the MAC's deal is exclusive to ESPN+; in fact, I think the deal is actually with ESPN directly for mid-week games, and that the remaining inventory goes to ESPN+.

No idea how the legislation's actually written, but I suspect it would only apply to deals that blackout games from local markets in favor of streaming options.

All that said, in an era where the means of funding college sports is evolving super rapidly, I find it super dumb that state legislatures are trying trying to pass legislation that limits revenue streams.

Of course the state legislature would do something for the benefit of O$U that would totally screw over the rest of the college football fans in the state. 🙄

Beat me to it. Of all thing things to worry about. How about getting rid of the $8000 per stuent per year private school subsidy? How about a city that wants to get rid of single use plastic bags do that? I could go on and on but you get the point.

They just got done dealing with making sure high school games take cash! And setting price limits.