There’s no secret that sports have always been the gateway to get your brand or company seen by the masses.

Some brands like Red Bull have become synonymous with action sports and championships because of how they have strategically positioned themselves.

NBC is looking to do the same. In the 2021 Rose Bowl between Utah and Ohio State broadcasted by ESPN, had 16.6 Million viewers tuned in. That was the most watched game in the history of Utah football.

In an article written by Zach Miller of medium.com, he wrote on the viewership in college football from 2015-2019 (pre-Covid). The results showed that in just the top-25 programs viewed per week, 7 of those programs were from the Big Ten. They averaged just about 17.3 million views each week; let alone the fact that NBC still has Notre Dame’s media rights which brings in just about 3.61 million views.

The potential annual pay out of $1.1 Billion deal is a huge increase from the annual pay out of $440 million deal Fox gave the Big Ten back in 2017. The only conference that has a more lucrative deal is the SEC; sitting at $3 billion from Disney. The deal was signed in 2020 but won’t go into effect until 2024.

The game changer for NBC was their introduction of their streaming platform Peacock; a great compliment to the Notre Dame deal.