The Big 12 conference is finalizing a six-year, $2.28 billion media rights contract extension with ESPN and Fox.
The new contract, which begins in 2025, will carry an increase in per-team revenue over the existing contract, despite conference pillars Texas and Oklahoma being slated to leave the conference for the SEC in 2025.
The deal is expected to bring the conference $380 million a year when it begins, an increase of $160 million from the current contract, according to John Ourand of Sports Business Journal, which was the first to report the news.
That increase will result in an average revenue increase per school from $22 million to $31.7 million. The $380 million will be equally divided 12 ways, with the conference’s pending additions of BYU, UCF, Cincinnati, and Houston next summer.
The new deal will also increase the Big 12’s overall distribution, which currently stands at $42.6 million per school. The overall distribution number is the combination of multiple sources of revenue, such as NCAA basketball tournament units, bowl game revenue, and College Football Playoff revenue.
With the new deal, the overall per-school revenue is projected to increase to nearly $50 million starting in 2025-26. That total could be more depending on the money the newly expanded 12-team College Football Playoff will deliver.
The Big 12’s negotiating window for a new media rights deal contract was not supposed to open until February 2024. However, new Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark convinced the networks to open the negotiating window earlier, as reported by The Dallas Express.
The new deal securing an increase in revenue for each school is a significant win for Yormark, who assumed the position on August 1 and memorably said in July that the Big 12 was “open for business.”
His top priority as the new commissioner was to secure a strong media rights deal.
The argument could be made that had Texas and Oklahoma remained in the Big 12, the conference would have received a far larger contract.
Still, it is a success given that former Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby told Texas lawmakers in August 2021 that the conference would take a 50% media revenue hit due to the departures of Oklahoma and Texas.
The Big 12 also could have waited until February 2024 to go to the open market and may have attracted an outside bidder that would have offered more money for the conference in the long term.
But, Yormark prioritized giving the league security and visibility on traditional platforms.
Additionally, the new contract will be up in 2031, before the SEC’s or ACC’s media deals are up in ’34 and ’36, respectively.
This contract is also expected to have a clause that allows any potential new conference members to receive an equally proportional share of the money.
While college football is the top driver in the Big 12’s media value, the conference has been the top college basketball league in recent years.
Kansas and Baylor have won the past two college basketball national titles, and Texas Tech lost the championship game in overtime in 2019. New members Houston, Cincinnati, and BYU have also had strong basketball programs recently.
The Big 12 forming the framework of a media deal earlier than the Pac-12, a fellow Power Five conference, is also a big win. It signifies the conference is on more solid footing than the Pac-12, which is currently in the open market with its media rights deal expiring at the end of next season.
The Pac-12 is on tenuous footing amid the impending defection of conference pillars USC and UCLA to the Big Ten in 2024.
With the Big Ten already reaching a seven-year, $7 billion media rights agreement through 2031 with CBS, Fox, and NBC, those networks will have access to USC and UCLA games and may not be interested in shelling out more money to the Pac-12.
ESPN and Amazon have been linked as potential candidates to reach an agreement with the Pac-12.
