Report: New Big 12 Football, Basketball Rights Deal with FOX, ESPN May Arrive Soon

The Big 12 is looking to make a big play. Although the conference’s media deal with FOX and ESPN doesn’t run out until the end of the 2024-25 season, a report from CBS Sports's Dennis Dodd suggests that a new deal might be coming between the three sides in a matter of weeks.

The Big 12’s current deal with ESPN and FOX came in at around $2.6 billion when it was signed in 2012. The conference’s football rights are split between FOX and ESPN, but the men’s and women’s basketball slate of games belongs to ESPN alone. ESPN frequently uses its streaming platform ESPN+ to show Big 12 basketball games with a few football games mixed in as well.

The $2.6 billion price tag may sound like a hefty sum, but it pales in comparison to the rights deal recently signed by the Big Ten. That deal is worth up to $7.5 billion, and the Big 12 may have decided its share of the pie is now too small. Despite the fact that the Big 12 is losing two of its biggest brands — Texas and Oklahoma — starting in 2025, conference commissioner Brett Yormark thinks his schools are due for a raise.

“I don’t believe in flat,” Yormark said of his conference’s rights deal. “We’ve got to go up [in price]. We’ve made a very compelling case. We’re also selling a future vision. If you buy into my vision of where we’re going to take this conference, how we nationalize, how we build our brands — in partnership — then you’ll hopefully get to a point where you rationalize the number that I need in order to do this deal.”

There are more moving parts to the potential deal than are obvious at first, however. The Big 12 is also waiting on a media deal for the Pac 12, which has been linked to Amazon as well as other providers. If the Pac 12 signs a deal that includes a heavy focus on streaming, it may lose more schools who don’t want to be in a conference without a major linear provider. The Pac 12 already lost USC and UCLA to the Big Ten earlier this year.

If the Pac 12 does lose more schools, the Big 12 sees itself as a prime destination for them. If it gets a West Coast school, the Big 12 would be able to promote itself as a coast-to-coast conference, with games positioned in every viewing window that a broadcaster could want.

However, the impact of losing its two biggest blue blood programs in Texas and Oklahoma cannot be underestimated. Former Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby testified to the Texas legislature that the Big 12 could lose as much as 50% of its valuation when those schools depart. Yormark, the current commissioner, thinks that the conference’s role as a home of live sports should keep its worth high.

“There is nothing more valuable than live sports right now,” Yormark said. “Generally speaking, there is a huge appetite for what we sell. That in itself gets us to a higher place.”

Whether or not ESPN and FOX agree with that assessment remains to be seen, but keep your eye out if you’re a fan of a current Big 12 team. A deal between the three sides may be coming soon.