The Big 12 and ESPN have reached a substantial new TV deal for football games.
Sports Business Journal reported the following Wednesday on the deal, which goes through 2024:
In the new deal, which includes three championship games and ESPN+ rights, ESPN will pay a total of around $40M. When this agreement is added to the current media-rights deal that still has six years to run, the conference will average $22M per year, sources said.
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As part of the deal, ESPN picked up the rights to three football championship games in ’19, ’21 and ’23 that Fox had declined to buy.
On paper, that’s a lot of money from ESPN for the Big 12, but it’s not even close to the kind of cash being made by the SEC or the Big Ten. (RELATED: Should Graham Mertz
The B1G received payouts of more than $50 million per school in 2018 from deals with ESPN and Fox. That’s way more money than the Big 12 is getting. It’s not even close.
You almost have to wonder why the gap is so large.
The Big 12 has Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Kansas State. You’d think they’d get more money than they do, but I guess not.
The latest numbers I could find for conference revenue distribution for the Big 12 were from last summer, and pegged the number at $36.5 million per school.
Again, that’s a ton of cash, but it’s not even close to the number being put up by the B1G. Not having the same fat TV deals has to be a large reason why.
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Shoutout to the Big 12 for getting some more cash, but they’ve got a long ways to go before they catch the boys in the Midwest.