Yormark Delivers on Promise of Television Deal that Will Solidify Big 12 Future
The Big 12 Conference and new commissioner Brett Yormark have hit a bonanza deal with current television partners ESPN and FOX Sports that will secure the Big 12 as at least the third highest earning major athletic conference and secure their future while casting major doubt on the future of the Pac 12 Conference and dwarfing the earnings of the current and long-term deal that the Atlantic Coast Conference is saddled with. The extension with ESPN and Fox Sports on a six-year media rights agreement worth a total of $2.28B, an annual average of $380M, according to the first report in the Sports Business Journal. This just after the SEC and Big Ten secured deals that will pay their schools record amounts of upward of $80-$90-million per school per year.
The breakdown on the new Big 12 deal goes like this. The Conference current deal with the two partners runs through 2024-25 and has an annual payout of $220-million. The new extension will kick in and run through 2030-31. That is important because it matches up closely with when the new deals will run out with the Southeastern Conference and Big Ten. The Atlantic Coast Conference is in a long-term deal that goes through 2035 and the Pac-12 is looking for a new television rights deal as their current contract ends after 2023-24.
This new deal for the Big 12 with ESPN as the top player and FOX Sports on the “B” side is worth a total of $2.28-billion with an annual average of $380-million, according to sources that Sports Business Journal used for their story.
What the fans want to know is where can they see their Big 12 football and basketball. For the “A” package, ESPN will get the top four football picks each season and six of the top eight picks as well as eight of the top 12 picks. They will also number 12 of the top 20 picks. ESPN also gets the rights to the Big 12 football championship game and the basketball tournament championship game. The FOX Sports portion of the package includes 26 football games per season that will run on FOX Sports and FS1. For the first time FOX Sports will also get a compliment of Big 12 basketball games that will run on FOX Sports and FS1.
Yormark, proving the Big 12 Board of Directors made a strong move in hiring, landed the deal that he had promised them he would and a deal he has worked on actively for close to two months. He first told members of the board over a month ago that the deal was imminent and that it would be fruitful. He said it would be an extension of the current deal with the current television partners rather than waiting for an open negotiating period that would have come later in the process. Yormark felt the need to keep ESPN and FOX Sports and that the extension would not only provide the monetary earnings but also the necessary exposure for he and the Big 12 Conference new marketing partners to maximize revenue for the league in other and, in some cases, brand new streams.
The way that will breakdown is once the deal kicks in with new members BYU, Cincinnati, UCF, and Houston, each of the conference members will get $31.6-million annually from television revenue, which differs from the current annual payout from television of $22-million per school on average. [Note: The Pac-12 current deal pays each school $20.8-million and the ACC schools get rpughly $28.36-million per school} The rest of the schools’ payout from the conference comes from other revenue streams such as conference championship events, sponsorships, and merchandising. Yormark has big plans there to expand and branch out to new revenue streams and has enlisted Endeavor and other outside partners to assist with growing the Big 12 mark and it’s revenue opportunities. for instance, you could see patches on Big 12 uniforms in the future.
The rumored numbers we have heard from various sources have the Big 12 schools pulling in anywhere from an estimated $55-million to $65-million in annual conference payout revenue during the upcoming television deal.
This final step and reporting of the extension came from reporters Michal Smith and John Ourand of Sports Business Journal. Their story Sunday morning online did an excellent job is detailing the plusses for the Big 12. Those plusses are multiple and now there is definite pressure on the Pac-12 to keep up. The ACC is looking for ways to change their current situation as well in the face of the massive increases of the SEC and Big Ten.