Where Notre Dame stands on securing a new TV rights deal per AD Jack Swarbrick
College football coaches love to tell the media how little they pay attention to what’s being written about them and their teams. Athletic directors? Different story. Take it from Notre Dame’s Jack Swarbrick.
“I read once a week what our TV revenue is,” Swarbrick told BlueandGold.com this week. “It’s never accurate. And that’s OK. I don’t want to correct it.”
That’s the contrast between a coach and an administrator. The former have ample opportunities to set a narrative on the field and in press conferences. Swarbrick faces reporters in limited settings, meanwhile; after hirings, when new deals are reached with apparel and television partners, etc. Swarbrick will soon give a statement, at the least, on the apparel situation; he told BlueandGold.com that the Fighting Irish will have a deal in place with Under Armour, Nike or Adidas within the next month.
As for the TV partnership? That will likely take longer to pair up. Notre Dame’s current contract with NBC, which will begin broadcasting Big Ten games in 2024, runs through 2025.
“We have an opportunity to have a discussion now because of [NBC’s] acquisition of Big Ten rights, but the contract is not ending,” Swarbrick said. “We may wind up with a new agreement during this period of time. But we may not.”
Notre Dame’s exclusive negotiating window with Under Armour expired earlier this year, opening up Swarbrick’s freedom to speak with other suitors. Under Armour remains firmly in the mix and is the favorite, in many’s eyes, to keep supplying the Irish with their apparel. There are multiple reasons that is the case, and Swarbrick spelled those out to BlueandGold.com.
But it may not be as simple as assuming NBC will win the bidding war to keep broadcasting Notre Dame games because the Swabrick’s soon-to-be successor, Pete Bevacqua, is the chairman of NBC Sports group. NBC has aired every Notre Dame home game for over three decades dating back to 1991, and Bevacqua has been instrumental in the behind the scenes aspects of that for the last five years. It’s eerily similar to Swarbrick’s son, Cal, being a major marketing executive at Under Armour.
Despite the way it looks, though, Notre Dame’s dealings with UA and NBC go far beyond nepotism.
“It’s the opposite, actually,” Swarbrick said. “Appropriately, Pete was a strong advocate inside NBC. He sees the value of this relationship. He’s passionate about Notre Dame. It’s great to have somebody in NBC who felt that way about Notre Dame. NBC values this property a lot. But we’ve lost that. So it’s not as easy as saying, ‘Gee, now that Pete is here we’ll get this deal done.’ It’s not that way.”
As for the monetary amounts Swarbrick said he sees over and over again — Front Office Sports just put one out Wednesday in saying Notre Dame is looking for $65 to $75 million annually from NBC — there is a number Swarbrick is shooting for. He wouldn’t share it with BlueandGold.com. The common consensus, whether it’s fact or fiction, is that Notre Dame currently makes $20 to $25 million per year from NBC plus the roughly $17 million it made as a partial member of the ACC.
With widespread reports of Big Ten and SEC schools being on the verge of reeling in $80 to $90 million once those conferences turn into super leagues in 2024, it’s natural to ballpark Notre Dame’s asking price from NBC at the figures Front Office Sports revealed. Sixty-five plus 17 equals 82. Seventy-five plus 17 equals 92. In a world that revolves around competitive pay, from those flipping burgers at fast food joints to those benefitting from multi-million dollar TV contracts, that’d be as competitive as it gets.
Even the man who won’t show his hand still knows it’s all about the money.
“Number one is the financial support,” Swarbrick said. “There is no reason not to be direct about that. Everybody understands it. It’s important.”
What else is?
“It’s very important for us to be broadcasted nationally for every game,” Swarbrick said. “That’s unique. Most schools get regionalized. That exposure is very important to us.”
Exposure doesn’t just come in the form of every Notre Dame home game — outside of the one per year the last three seasons that have shifted to NBC’s streaming service, Peacock — being on one of America’s “big three” cable networks. It comes from the association Notre Dame has with the network and the advocacy as a byproduct of it.
Swarbrick will never forget what one of his acquaintances told him while watching one of golf’s biggest events, for example.
“He said, ‘I love watching the Ryder Cup, but if I hear one more thing about Notre Dame I’m going to turn it off,’” Swabrick recalled. “That’s great. That’s what we want. To have Notre Dame football promoted during a Sunday night NFL broadcast, no one else is getting that. That promotional commitment is very important.”
So it’s not Bevacqua, an NBC man through and through for the last half decade, becoming Notre Dame’s athletics director when Swarbrick steps down in the first few months of 2024 that should make people adamant NBC is not going anywhere when the current TV rights deal expires at the end of 2025. It’s the reality that there has been a good thing going since 1991, and if the network comes up with ample financial allocation there is no reason to think the clock has struck midnight on the two parties’ marriage.
“There is very good faith in the discussions we are having with NBC,” Swarbrick said.
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