Big 12 teams up with ESPN and Fox Sports for broadcast rights

The Big 12 Conference has recently announced that it has inked an agreement with ESPN and Fox Sports for the conference broadcast rights. The 13-year deal is said to be worth $2.6 billion for the rights to televise Big 12 football and men’s basketball games, through the 2024-25 season.

The specific terms weren’t released, but sources have been quoted as saying that each school in the conference will be looking to receive roughly $20 million per year for the length of the deal.

The games will be broadcast on the Fox Sports network, the ESPN network and ABC.

”The stability of the Big 12 Conference is cemented,” commissioner Bob Bowlsby said in a statement. “We are positioned with one of the best media rights arrangements in collegiate sports, providing the conference and its members unprecedented revenue growth, and sports programming over two networks.”

ESPN has stated that it will broadcast 19 football games the conference chooses per year through 2015, then that number will increase to 23 games per year for the duration of the agreement.The exclusive broadcast rights to the Big 12 men’s basketball tournament will belong to ESPN and they will televise up to 105 regular season contests per year as well.

The deal is a savior for the conference as it’s been thought it might fold due financial troubles. They lost four schools to other conferences over the last two years, Texas A&M and Missouri left for the SEC, Nebraska bolted to the Big Ten, and Colorado departed to the Pac-12. Replacing them this season are TCU and West Virginia.