'The way of the future': Ohio State football enters the streaming era with game on Peacock

The last quarter century has made it easy on fans of Ohio State to watch the school’s football team, requiring only a click of a television remote control.

But they will need to do a little more maneuvering on Saturday to see the Buckeyes visit Purdue.

That’s because the game will be shown only on Peacock, a streaming service owned by NBCUniversal. For the first time since 1997, the Buckeyes won’t be on traditional TV.

Under the Big Ten’s new three-network media rights package, nine games involving conference teams are to be exclusively streamed on the platform each season.

Fans will have to pay $5.99, the monthly subscription fee, instead of flipping the channel to one of the major networks or the Big Ten Network, which is available on basic cable bundles in Columbus, ushering in a new viewing era.

Twelve of Ohio State’s men’s and women’s basketball games will also air on Peacock this winter.

“This is really the way of the future,” said Jon Miller, NBC Sports’ president for acquisitions and partnerships, “and it’s a very important part of every deal we do.”

Ohio State football: Planning to watch the Buckeyes' game at a bar? Better make sure it has Peacock.

The rise of cord-cutting, which has seen tens of millions of households in the U.S. drop cable over the past decade, has prompted media companies to invest in streaming platforms that are sold to consumers directly.

NBC, one of the Big Ten’s new media partners, launched Peacock in 2020 and began offering access to the Olympics, English Premier League soccer games and Notre Dame football games, among other sports and entertainment programming. The streaming platform will also carry an NFL playoff game exclusively this season.

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“It’s not about NBC being greedy,” said Patrick Crakes, a former FOX Sports executive who runs a media consulting firm. “It’s about NBC trying to figure out how to survive. And the Big Ten is one of the few properties to help them do that.”

Live sports are in high demand and provide a significant boost to a streaming’s offerings. There is little inventory available that drive subscriptions at a faster rate.

The subscriber growth is the hope.

“Every single streaming service is trying to have a lot of sports or even just some one-offs,” said Ben Koo, the owner and editor of Awful Announcing, a website covering the sports media industry, “just so you sample what it is, get it on your TV or device, and potentially have your credit card info in there so it’s saved, you can potentially stay with it or resubscribe next year.”

The streaming era became entrenched in the sports world last year when Amazon began carrying the NFL’s Thursday night games, airing them on its Prime Video platform. It marked the first digital-only package for the behemoth professional league.

“If the biggest league in the world can put a whole package, a billion-dollar package, exclusively on a streaming platform, everybody else will see, ‘OK, we can kind of get in line with this. The NFL has showed us that it's legit,’ ” said Austin Karp, the managing editor of the Sports Business Journal.

The prevalence of streaming will also increase across college football next season when the Southeastern Conference’s TV deal with ESPN takes effect. One nonconference game for every SEC team will air exclusively each season on the ESPN+ app at $9.99 a month.

There are no minimum requirements for Big Ten teams to appear on Peacock as NBC goes through the selection process with CBS, FOX and BTN, the league's other partners, 12 or six days in advance of kickoffs.

But a majority of the conference’s teams will end up on Peacock this fall, with the Buckeyes becoming the ninth out of the 14 teams to make an appearance.

They will also follow other blue bloods on the platform.

Michigan was on Sept. 2 for its season opener against East Carolina, then Penn State the next weekend when it hosted Delaware.

A priority for the network has been to pick games involving tradition-rich programs to draw more eyeballs. Larger fan bases hold more possible subscribers.

“You want to put the big schools on there that have the big following, that have the long rich history,” said Miller, the NBC executive.

NBC had looked at putting Ohio State’s game against Maryland last Saturday on Peacock, but instead selected Michigan’s game at Minnesota and aired it on its linear channel in prime time. The Buckeyes’ matchup with the Terrapins was then scooped up by FOX. It would take another week for them to make their streaming-only debut.

The network could end up benefiting by the Buckeyes being away from the Horseshoe. It won’t have to compete with fans buying tickets. There was an announced crowd of 104,974 in the stands of Ohio Stadium last weekend. Unless they make the drive to West Lafayette, they’ll be streaming this week’s contest.

“That’s big,” Miller said. “A lot goes into it, but those are the kind of things that the data comes back and says you’ll probably have a lot more fans that might have not signed up for Peacock, will now sign up for Peacock.

“Ohio State has such a huge national following that our feeling is that it enhances our ability to be successful with the game.”

Miller said the aim is that the presence of big brands on Peacock in the early weeks of the football season will also allow fans to acclimate to the platform ahead of the basketball seasons that begin next month.

“There’s no difference in quality than what you would watch on regular television,” Miller said. “I think people will find it a pretty good experience.”

Andrew Siciliano, the former host of DIRECTV's Red Zone Channel, will be the play-by-play broadcaster for the Buckeyes’ game at Purdue, along with Kyle Rudolph, a former Notre Dame tight end and NFL veteran, as the color analyst.

There still figures to be an adjustment period for fans who are accustomed to watching the Buckeyes on linear TV and now might need to stream their games at least once a season. Even cable has been more of the exception rather than the rule this season. Four of the first five games were on one of the major networks. Streaming adds additional costs.

“Ohio State now has to manage its fans,” Crakes said. “‘We’re not in one place all the time.’”

That shift is in full swing.

Joey Kaufman covers Ohio State football for The Columbus Dispatch. Follow him on Facebook and X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. He can also be contacted at jkaufman@dispatch.com.

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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio State football enters streaming era with Peacock game at Purdue