A New Player in Media Rights for Big Ten Could Impact Big 12

STILLWATER – The Big 12 Conference, especially with the four new schools that will be added as soon as the 2023-24 school year, will be looking on with great curiosity and interest as the Big Ten Conference with their media rights ending in 2023-2024 and the Pac-12 Conference also up ahead of the Big 12 with their multi-media rights contract with FOX and ESPN concluding in the 2023-24 school year negotiate future deals. There was word breaking today that a new player is in play for the Big Ten.

The Big 12 with announced departures in the University of Texas and University of Oklahoma has a contract with ESPN and FOX that goes through the 2024-25 school year. New contracts can be expected to be negotiated in advance of the end of the current deals. For instance, the Southeastern Conference already has a deal in place with ESPN that will replace the agreement that league has with CBS that runs through 2022-23. That new deal is worth $3-billion and will pay the league $300-million on an annual basis.

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FOX Sports currently has Big Ten rights.

Word today with a report from Mike McCarthy at Front Office Sports is that NBC is interested in the Big Ten. Industry experts believe the Big Ten rights package could approach $1.1-billion annually. The current contract for the Big Ten, which FOX as the heavy pays the conference around $440-million annually. A new deal in the neighborhood of that $1.1-billion would be a huge increase.

Nobody from NBC commented on the report, but the Front Office Sports report had sources from NBC and in the industry saying the Peacock Network, which also streams now on Peacock views the Big Ten as the perfect league to pair with their exclusive agreement with Notre Dame.

It is agreed that the SEC and Big Ten will be the leagues with the largest media rights contract. The ACC extended what was originally a 12-year deal with ESPN and had the objective of getting exposure through an ACC Network. They got the network, but they also got an unfavorable rights deal financially all the way through 2036. They will make a fraction of what schools in the SEC and likely Big Ten will be making.

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The Pac-12 and Big-12 negotiate last in this round of media rights negotiations. Could a partnership be created?

The Pac-12 has a fairly new commissioner in George Kliavkoff and he will be watching all this carefully. The Pac-12 issues are not having any schools east of the mountain time zone making the popular noon kickoff window in the eastern time zone very difficult for their league. Competition is a problem as well. The Pac-12 just hasn’t been relevant in college football like they used to be.

The Big 12 and commissioner Bob Bowlsby steadied their ship with the addition of Cincinnati, Houston, Central Florida, and BYU. Those four schools give them a major religious school in BYU, the school of the Mormon faith; and then a school in the upper Midwest to join West Virginia in Cincinnati; an avenue into Florida with UCF; and another Texas school in a major metropolitan area in Houston.

The question is how much can the new Big 12 get in television rights. If FOX is left out of the Big Ten they will have more money to spend on the Big 12 and/or Pac-12. There are other entities that might be interested such as Amazon, which is now carrying NFL football on Thursday nights, Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming networks could be interested.

After the Big Ten negotiations, the Big 12 and Pac-12 could look into some sort of consolidation or partnership and even bid their media rights in partnership. It would solve some problems each one has and potentially get more money for all of its’ members combined.