MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Arizona State University terminated its five-year-old multimedia rights deal with IMG College, the same firm that acquired the rights from West Virginia University last year.
ASU is seeking more than $5 million in damages from the North Carolina-based firm for “failure to meet contract obligations.”
The university claims that IMG failed to provide “full and effective” radio coverage throughout Arizona, Las Vegas and Southern California. The school claims it is owed more than $4,2 million for insufficient radio coverage as well as $763,270 for not receiving required radio spots and $536,124 for a trade account dispute with the syndication firm.
The Sun Devils radio network by IMG featured 14 radio stations in 12 markets for football this year—just 10 stations in eight markets for Sun Devils basketball—and only one station for baseball coverage.
Poor radio reception has been a problem throughout the West Virginia hills the past two seasons. IMG revamped the Mountaineer Sports Network after first obtaining the rights from WVU in 2013 and rolled out a new roster of radio stations that reduced the network’s footprint by nearly 45 percent. The new MSN by IMG network lost more than 1.5 million potential listeners in coverage compared to the original Mountaineers Sports Network operated by WVU and jettisoned nearly 40 percent of radio listeners, down from a high of 512,900 in 2012 to 309,100 in 2013, according to data from Nielsen Audio.
A major part of the decline is due to IMG’s inability to attract a Pittsburgh radio station to carry Mountaineers programming and the loss of numerous West Virginia Radio Corporation stations across West Virginia and western Maryland. Officials from West Virginia University, IMG College and West Virginia Radio Corporation are currently locked in a legal battle over the granting of broadcast rights last year.
West Virginia Radio is the parent company of WVMetroNews.com.
Arizona State first notified IMG of a potential breach of contract in 2012 and said they tried to remedy the faults with the firm. IMG has said through published reports that it would seek $35 million in lost revenue from the school. Published reports also say that IMG lost approximately $10 million during the first four years of their agreement with ASU and was poised to make their profit during the remaining seven years of the contract.
In response, IMG replied, “Arizona State has decided to aggregate breaches of little or no importance into a major controversy and rationale to terminate the contract. ASU is now engaged in a charade of contract interpretation and supposed violations all for an illegal purpose, to terminate the contract so it can divert even more benefits to itself without regard to promises made to IMG.”
Jose Cardenas, Arizona State’s senior vice president and general counsel, wrote to IMG on Sept. 30, “ASU’s successive offers reflected concessions based on concerns voiced by IMG. In contrast, each IMG offer was progressively worse as regards to ASU’s interests. Most recently, IMG gave notice it would not negotiate the financial terms of its proposal further.”
Cardenas said that development left ASU with “no choice but to terminate the contract.”
Despite attempts by Arizona State to set a convenient end date sometime in the future, IMG elected to end all services to the Sun Devils on Oct.27 after the Pac 12 conference football game between Arizona State and Washington.
Syracuse University sent IMG a notice of termination in July but reached a new agreement with IMG in August in time for the current football season. The University of Kentucky announced it will leave IMG to partner with JMI Sports in a new 15-year $210 million dollar deal.
IMG’s agreement with Arizona State, scheduled to run through 2021, was worth about $7 million per year.
Reports from Sports Illustrated and azcentral.com were used in developing this story.