RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif. — Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel is confident his men’s basketball program will face Duke on Amazon Prime next season. Still, officially, it remains unresolved with the Big Ten, its media rights partners and the two powerhouse programs.
“We’re working through it,” Manuel told reporters at the Big Ten meetings this week. “I think it’ll be fine. What I’m looking forward to is playing the game.”
The neutral-site contest, scheduled for Madison Square Garden in New York City, falls into ambiguous territory for the Big Ten and its teams regarding media rights contracts. For decades, basketball programs have participated in games or multi-team events organized by third-party groups at neutral sites. Those third-party hosts sell viewing rights to individual networks or streaming sites.
However, Michigan and Duke met last year in Washington, D.C., with the Blue Devils designated as the home team, which allowed the game to air on ESPN as part of the ACC’s media rights package.
With the teams playing in a second consecutive season, a traditional contract, even at a neutral site, would call for Michigan — and the Big Ten — to retain those viewing rights. The Big Ten has media rights deals with Fox, CBS and NBC, and any of those networks would desire to broadcast a high-profile matchup between the national champion Wolverines and Duke. Amazon Prime set up a three-game contract with Duke, and Michigan is slated to be one of those three matchups.
“My staff said they made sure that everybody understood that it needed to go through Big Ten, and they had our media rights,” Manuel said. “What I didn’t know — and it’s fine — and they didn’t necessarily need to disclose, but I was surprised when it became three games that they were putting together.”
For some multi-team events, the programs pay a group as much as $100,000 to participate, and the games sometimes appear on streaming-only services. The Big Ten has frowned upon many third-party basketball deals, especially those involving its highly visible programs.
“Fortunately for us, because of our brand, we’re going to be playing on major networks regardless; we’re going to be playing it at prime time slots,” Michigan coach Dusty May said. “For us, it’s selecting the ones that make the most sense for Michigan, for our opponent, for our leagues and also the overall enterprise of college basketball.”
When the Big Ten Network debuted in 2007, the membership pledged non-national, third-tier television rights to the league. Initially, that was costly to programs like Indiana and Iowa, which had robust statewide networks. Now, the Big Ten’s media rights package is the most lucrative among the conferences, with the league disbursing $1.37 billion to its membership, according to its 2025 fiscal year tax return.
“I’m a big believer that you want the strengths in the league,” Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti said. “Where I sit in the conference office, what you care about is, are you providing the partners that are creating a lot of value for you, are you providing them with the best inventory? And that’s the way we want to approach it.
“We believe that we can create more events, and we believe that we don’t need third parties to do that. That’s basically a function of a conference office creating events. I don’t think it’s a crazy thing to be able to do, but we’ve shown we can do it. We played hockey at Wrigley. We’re looking at a neutral site wrestling tournament for the first time.”
