Big 12 announces media rights extension through 2030-31 football season

By Brian Wilmer -

The Big 12 Conference has extended its media rights agreements with FOX and ESPN through the 2030-31 football season, it was announced Friday.

“The Big 12 Conference is thrilled to announce it has executed its long-form agreements for the extension of its media rights with partners ESPN and FOX through the 2030-31 academic year,” Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark said in a statement released on Friday.

“We would like to thank both ESPN and FOX for their continued partnership,” Yormark continued. “Additionally, we’d like to thank the teams at Endeavor and Proskauer for their contributions throughout this process. This deal not only provides stability for the Big 12 in years to come, but it creates a strong foundation for future growth and innovation.”

CBS Sports’ Dennis Dodd reported last October that the sides were in the process of reaching an agreement. Financial terms were not disclosed as part of the Friday announcement, but Dodd’s piece offered preliminary financial data.

Additionally, SI’s Ross Dellenger reports a tidbit regarding a schedule modification for the league.

No further details surrounding the agreement had been released as of press time Friday.

Comments (19)

If the Big 12 is unable to land any Pac-12 schools, which I think would be for the best, then the Big 12 should look at raiding the American again, this time taking Memphis, SMU, South Florida, Temple and Tulane, plus Boise State of the MW. Would allow more significant markets into the conference including the second-largest on the East Coast in Philadelphia, the ability for SMU-TCU to be a conference game again and now played on Black Friday at AT&T Stadium, and Boise State would have the only non-green playing surface in the Power 5.

In which case I could see a sub-licensing arrangement to lessen the burden on Fox and ESPN, perhaps with CBS, with the broadcast network airing Big 12 games at noon most Saturdays (and at night when an Air Force CIC Trophy game is on), plus games on Paramount Network (in more homes than CBSSN) and Paramount+.

Hallo, Zman.
I echo B12 Commish. Brett Yormark in that …”I hope the ‘PacificAthleticConf.’ Schools achieve a media Broadcast deal they’re happy with.”

Everyone is waiting to see what happens once the ACC TV deal is up.

If the ACC implodes Louisville and Pittsburgh makes a ton of sense for the Big 12. Even Syracuse and Georgia Tech could fit in.

If those five AAC teams contributes enough value to support that move, then the current AAC TV deal would be a lot richer. Just adding teams for the sake of adding teams doesn’t make economic sense.

The ACC’s TV deal is not going to be up for another 13 years. So there’s no point in waiting for that.

It makes way more sense in waiting for 13 years to get Pitts, Louisville, Georgia tech vs bad programs like USF and Temple that no one cares about. Temple and USF don’t move the needle at all. If they wanted Memphis and SMU they would have taken them already. They are trying to get better programs.

Louisville and Pitt have great basketball programs too and would be reunited with WVU and Cincy.

Temple is 7-24 over the last 3 years. Please tell me why it makes sense to take them now instead of waiting 13 years for Pittsburg? Who also make the basketball NCAA tournament.

They would be better off adding Uconn than those teams. At least they win in other sports. Yorkman was recently in Storrs talking with Uconn’s AD.

I already stated that these schools would bring in some pretty interesting markets. The ACC already extended their TV deal well before expiration once. Who is to say they won’t do it again?

If they wanted those schools they would have taken them this year with the other American teams.

No point in diluting the conference. Remember the schools would have to split their tv money with those schools too. If Temple doesn’t bring in huge tv numbers why would the other big12 schools want to give them 10’s of millions?

In October of 2018, after conducting in-person interviews with 11 schools (Air Force, BYU, UCF, Cincinnati, Colorado State, UConn, Houston, Rice, South Florida, SMU and Tulane) in Dallas, the Big 12 announced it was declining to expand. The reason for their group proscribes of this group was simple – none of these schools would get the conference beyond their targeted revenue of over $40 million per school per year. Their decision changed once Texas and Oklahoma announced their intension to departure for the SEC. Why, you ask? The remnant group of Big 12 Schools learned shortly this announcement; that they would receive much less than their targeted value and that to survive at or even close to ‘Power-5’ sports departments, they will be forced to include BYU, UCF, Cincinnati and Houston. This resulted in a Big 12 configuration that maxed out at a TV contract valued at just over $30 million apiece (that would be $10 million apiece less than their initial targeted value). This is the best they can do. Everyone just stop.

Z-man go back to campaigning for your first love – advocating for night games in cold weather.

I think it’s already there once PAC loses USC/UCLA.

Already better than ACC and G5 teams.

College Football belongs on Saturday, not in the middle of the week. The NFL now plays Thursday through Monday. I left the NFL over 2 decades ago.

BYU and the former AAC teams were already playing on Friday nights. I suspect this will primarily be a continuation of that.

Hi Stan,
Friday is technically a Weeknight.

I like Friday night Lights since it is the beginning of the Weekend.

I don’t have the opportunity to watch college Football the other Nights of the Week.
There’s too much else Monday thru Friday Days that must be done.

Also, the best fits for the Pac-12 would be San Diego State and UNLV. They are a natural geographic pair (of which five would still exist among current Pac-12 members post-2024) with both schools largely connected by I-15. SDSU would keep the Pac-12 in SoCal while UNLV would bring in a fast-growing market in Vegas, allowing Pac-12 student-athletes to go to Vegas more often than just for certain conference championships.

Perhaps to increase its profile as part of a move to the Pac-12 UNLV can change its name to Nevada Tech University to better distinguish itself from the University of Nevada in Reno (Nevada State is already taken), mark an effort to stop Nevada Wolf Pack fans from calling the institution Nevada Southern in jest (the former name of UNLV), and with the new institution name a new nickname would be adopted, perhaps Blackjacks.

Vegas University works too.
.
Auburn, Rutgers, Clemson, Purdue, and part of Cornell are all major state universities that don’t use the state’s name.
.
Like the idea to change the mascot, but Black___ isn’t likely going to fly, nor Gamblers. Perhaps an alliterative Victors.

Pac 12 should add sdsu boise state Gonzaga Hawaii(football only) and SMU.