Big 12 agrees to 13-year media rights deal

By Alex Halsted

The Big 12 Conference confirmed its newly found stability Friday as the conference announced it has agreed to a 13-year media rights deal that will be worth a reported $2.6 billion.

The deal, which is with ABC/ESPN and FOX, will reportedly pay the conference an average of $200 million per year and run through the 2024-25 school year. That money will be divided equally amongst the Big 12 institutions, paying each school $20 million per year.

“The stability of the Big 12 Conference is cemented,” said Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby in a news release. “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.”

Aside from the money, the big agreement which the Big 12’s board of directors voted to approve Friday morning is a grant of rights. The grant of rights assures the conference that if any institution leaves within the next 13 years, their media rights and all revenue would remain with the Big 12 and not their new conference.

The Big 12 joins both the Pac-12 and Big Ten as the only conferences to have grant of rights agreements and is on-par with each conference when it comes to distributed revenue per school.

Under the new media rights deal, ABC/ESPN and FOX will both broadcast Big 12 football while ABC/ESPN will have exclusive rights to the conference’s men’s basketball broadcasts.

This agreement replaces the old media rights deal the Big 12 had, which was slated to run through the 2015-16 school year.

Read more here: http://www.iowastatedaily.com/sports/article_e0294de0-f89b-11e1-b0d5-001a4bcf887a.html
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