The Sports Business Journal / Sports Business Daily is reporting that the Big XII and ESPN are close to a 9-year extension through 2025 that will earn the conference a total of $2.5 billion dollars over the next 13 years from the new ESPN deal and the already-existing deal with Fox Sports. Putting the tweet in the post messes with the formatting, so I'll throw it down at the bottom.
From the linked article:
By network, the Big 12 stands to make $1.3 billion from ESPN and $1.2 billion from Fox over the life of the two deals. ESPN’s old contract with the Big 12 ran through 2016, but the two sides are close on a nine-year extension that will increase the conference’s average revenue from its current $150 million a year to nearly $200 million annually. Each Big 12 school stands to make roughly $5 million more a year in the new contract over the old deal.
I'm curious if this agreement, assuming it comes to pass, will be contingent on the league expanding back to 12 teams or staying at the current 10. Several schools are said to be vying for inclusion should the league decide to go back to 12, but most reports I've seen have the overall tenor of the league being against expanding upwards from 10 because it would mean the loss of the double round-robin basketball schedule, a return to 8 conference football games, and the re-introduction of a conference championship game for football.
I'm also curious to see how this affects the renegotiation of the Fox deal that is supposed to occur in 2013 or 2014. As the article also notes, other leagues, such as the now 14-team SEC, may also use this deal to leverage their own higher payments, meaning our relative improvement could quickly vanish. For the meantime, however, our absolute payments are going up somewhere on the order of $5 million per year, an amount that will no-doubt help pay for our shiny new stadium.
BREAKING: Big 12, ESPN near blockbuster deal that will bump conference TV revenue to $2.5 billion over 13 years: sbjsbd.biz/yi8Pqn
— SBJ/SBD (@SBJSBD) March 13, 2012