CBS, Time Warner Sign 14-Year March Madness Deal

If you woke up and found yourself suddenly in possession of $10.8 billion dollars, what would you spend it on? A new suit? A nice new car? Maybe get your hair did? Well, here's another option to consider: the rights to broadcast March Madness for the next 14 years.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, that's the option that CBS and Time Warner have chosen, as the two media giants have teamed up to buy the lucrative broadcast rights from the NCAA. The deal, which begins next year, supersedes CBS's prior broadcast deal, which had been set to run through 2014.If you woke up and found yourself suddenly in possession of $10.8 billion dollars, what would you spend it on? A new suit? A nice new car? Maybe get your hair did? Well, here's another option to consider: the rights to broadcast March Madness for the next 14 years.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, that's the option that CBS and Time Warner have chosen, as the two media giants have teamed up to buy the lucrative broadcast rights from the NCAA. The deal, which begins next year, supersedes CBS's prior broadcast deal, which had been set to run through 2014.

Under the terms of the deal, CBS and Time Warner will split coverage of the annual postseason basketball tournament, which is perennially one of the highest-rated sporting events in America, until 2024. Games will be spread over the Time Warner family of networks, including TBS, TNT and TruTV, though the championship game and the Final Four will air exclusively on CBS through 2015.

The announcement comes as a bit of a surprise, as many industry insiders expected ESPN to secure the rights. However, despite a strong pitch from the self-proclaimed "worldwide leader in sports," the network was unable to match the combined might of CBS and Time Warner.

"We made an aggressive bid and believe our combination of TV distribution, digital capabilities, season-long coverage and year-round marketing would have served the interests of the NCAA and college fans very well," an ESPN spokesman said.

"It looks like CBS and Turner partnered to pay up to keep ESPN from approaching a monopoly on TV sports rights," analyst David Joyce told THR.

Just how many games the deal will encompass, of course, remains a bit up in the air; while nothing has yet been officially announced, it is widely believed that in order to sweeten the deal, the NCAA will expand the tournament from its current 65 team field in order to add extra games and, by extension, extra ad revenue for the networks. Recent reports indicate that an expansion to 68 teams may occur as soon as next year, with a later bump to 96 teams still possible.

The NCAA board of governors will vote on whether to increase the field to 68 next week.