Big 12 agrees to TV extension with ESPN and Fox securing post-Texas, Oklahoma future

There is life after Texas and Oklahoma in spite of everything – and a pleasant TV extension, too.

Fifteen months after the Big 12′s obituary was written with the defection of the Longhorns and Sooners to the SEC, the once-embattled convention is a brand new deal with ESPN and Fox.

And stability, too.

Citing sources, Sports Business Journal was the first to report Sunday that the Big 12 has a brand new six-year media rights deal value $2.28 billion that may run via 2030-31. The present Big 12 deal expires on June 30, 2025, when Texas and OU are scheduled to depart.

An individual acquainted with the settlement confirmed the extension and its particulars to the Morning News. The particular person characterised the deal as a vote of confidence by two main sports activities media gamers within the future of the Big 12. The latest parity within the Big 12 was sufficient to persuade ESPN and Fox that the convention had worth apart from blue bloods Texas and Oklahoma.

The settlement additionally represents a serious victory for brand new Commissioner Brett Yormark, who’s simply finishing three months on the job. He made the choice to method ESPN and Fox lengthy earlier than the February 2024 negotiation window on the present deal.

Even with the pending addition of BYU, Central Florida, Cincinnati and Houston, the TV income will rise from $220 million yearly to $380 million or about $31.7 million per college.

The quantity represents a serious reversal of fortune for the convention.

In August 2021, former commissioner Bob Bowlsby advised Texas lawmakers than the Big 12 confronted a possible 50% hit to its subsequent TV contract with the departure of the Longhorns and Sooners. As lately as Big 12 basketball media days earlier this month, Yormark made news when he assured a rise within the subsequent TV contract.

“I know the media has stated that with the loss of Texas and Oklahoma, our number would go backwards,” Yormark mentioned. “Let me say it very clearly: We’re not going backwards, and we’re not staying flat. We’re going up.

“The question is how far up?”

The reply got here Sunday as a part of the deal negotiated by Yormark, a former Brooklyn Nets govt in addition to consultants Endeavor and IMG Media.

“No one should be shocked by this,” Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte advised the Austin American-Statesman. (*12*)

The Big 12 board of administrators nonetheless has to approve the total deal, which is predicted by early December. That is predicted to be formality.

While the Big 12 will probably be nowhere close to the convention income of the Big Ten or SEC going ahead, it’s well-positioned with the ACC and the Pac-12, the opposite Power Five conferences.

Under the extension, member colleges will probably be topic to a grant of media rights via 2031. There can also be a professional rata clause which might develop the contract ought to the Big 12 add members, leaving growth on the desk as an choice.

Yormark has been open about presumably increasing the convention’s footprint. The Pac-12 – particularly Arizona, Colorado, Arizona State and Utah — has been talked about as a probable goal with USC and UCLA sure for the Big Ten in 2024.

With the Big 12 now having posted a concrete quantity, the stress will probably be on the Pac-12 to match that on a per college foundation. There’s additionally the Big Ten issue. Should the Big Ten issue make one other growth play with Washington and Oregon, the remaining Pac-12 colleges might bail to the secure haven of the Big 12.

But the extension, the Big 12 could not want to develop for additional viability.

Meanwhile, the Pac-12 is in search of companions on its TV deal, which expires in 2024.

Under the settlement, ESPN will get its choose of the highest 4 soccer video games every season and 12 of the highest 20. It will televise the soccer and males’s basketball championship video games. But Fox will turn into an even bigger participant for Big 12 males’s basketball, a beneficial commodity anticipated to be much more aggressive with Houston becoming a member of the league.

Twitter: @ChuckCarltonDMN

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