Big Ten sets multibillion-dollar media deal with CBS, NBC, Fox
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The Big Ten Conference has struck a deal for media rights to its college sports that is reportedly worth up to $7.5B, amping up an already competitive arms race in sports programming as power among colleges continues to concentrate in a few buckets.
The conference reached a seven-year deal with CBS (NASDAQ:PARA) (PARAA), NBC (NASDAQ:CMCSA), Fox (NASDAQ:FOX) (FOXA) and NBCU streaming platform Peacock, and will also show sports on the Big Ten Network and Fox Sports 1.
The approach resembles the NFL's stance of spreading media rights over several partners, and the breadth will "place conference football, women's and men's basketball and Olympic sports student-athletes on the biggest stage and provide fans with the most exciting matchups across traditional over-the-air linear television and direct-to-consumer streaming," the Big Ten says.
Big Ten football in particular will "dominate" Saturdays, it says, starting in the fall of 2023 with a game on Fox at noon ET, CBS at 3:30 p.m. ET, and NBC in prime time.
The newly expanded deal is in line with a newly expanded conference: With the addition of USC and UCLA from the Pac-12 Conference, the Midwest-focused Big Ten is expanding coast to coast.
The seven-year deal is worth up to $7.5B, according to The Wall Street Journal. And it effectively helps narrow what was a group of five athletic conferences (the "Power Five") to two prominent leagues, the Big Ten and SEC - with the ACC, Big 12 and Pac-12 now significantly smaller in influence.
In contrast to the Big Ten's approach, the WSJ notes, the SEC places its premium football games on Disney (NYSE:DIS) properties and relies heavily on cable through ESPN channels.