ESPN has agreed to pay $190 million annually over six years to share media rights to Big Ten football and basketball games with Fox Sports, according to SportsBusiness Journal’s John Ourand.
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ESPN has finalized a deal with the Big 10 collegiate athletic conference that will keep some of the college division’s games on the network, with a substantial price hike.
The ESPN deal, according to SBJ’s report, is for half of the league’s media rights. Ourand says CBS will renew its basketball-only deal with the conference for $10 million per year through 2023, a pact that includes the conference tournament.
The victor here is the Big Ten, which will get somewhere around $2.64 billion in television money from Fox, ESPN and CBS, according to Ourand.
The Big Ten Conference and ESPN have agreed to contract terms for half of the league’s media rights package. That’s almost triple what ESPN and CBS had been paying for the same set of games under the previous rights deals.
Some rivalry broadcasts, including the annual MI vs. Ohio State football game, likely will move to Fox. FOX’s move does mean big changes for the conference, but ESPN will still have a major Big Ten presence. The network is now over half-way owned by fox (51 percent), and has a deal with the conference that will extend through 2031-32. The $2.64 billion combined deal doesn’t take into account the money earned from the lucrative Big Ten Network or any other revenue streams. The April news of the Fox deal reportedly spurred action from Skipper.
The Big Ten Network also remains prominent in all this, with a rights package that runs through 2031-32. Delany represented the Big Ten, and Big Ten Network President Mark Silverman represented BTN.
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According to the report, the Big Ten hopes to have all of the details ironed out by Big Ten football Media Days in late July.
