Report: CBS Almost Paid ESPN to Take the Tourney

In the afterglow of the fact that the NCAA Tournament is only going to 68 teams in a new deal with CBS and Turner comes this strange story from the New York Times regarding what was once discussed.↵↵⇥ An extraordinary idea was broached last fall when CBS was trying to shave the huge losses it anticipated over the remaining years of its N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament deal.↵⇥↵⇥CBS talked with ESPN about paying it to take the 2010 to 2013 tournaments off its hands, according to four executives with intimate knowledge of the talks who were not authorized or willing to speak publicly.↵⇥

↵↵Losing money on a big event isn’t anything we haven’t discussed in recent weeks. After all, NBC did lose $223 million on the Winter Olympics. The money CBS was set to shell out in the final three years of the old tournament deal was huge: $657 million in 2011, $710 million in 2012 and $765 million in 2013. The New York Times report indicates CBS was “looking at losing $50 million or more on its 2010 broadcast of the tournament” and losses in total over those final years could’ve been at least $200 million. As bad as those numbers sound, losing $200 million over a few years still seems financially prudent compared to what NBC pulled off during one Winter Olympics broadcast.↵