Big Ten Sets $1B Yearly Media Deal with CBS, NBC, Fox

The Big Ten Conference has reached the richest-ever television agreement for a college athletic league, selling the rights to its competitions for an average of at least $1 billion a year.

The NY Times reports the ten-year arrangement cements the Big Ten as one of the nation’s pre-eminent college sports leagues, but it promises to fuel the intensifying debate over how universities should treat athletes who are not paid salaries.

The deal, which reflects television networks’ desire to capitalize on America’s enormous appetite for sports, comes at a time of extraordinary upheaval in college athletics. The college sports industry has faced setbacks in statehouses and courtrooms, including one at the Supreme Court in 2021 that made it more vulnerable to antitrust challenges. And college sports’ diminished political influence has helped empower athletes to speak out against longstanding rules, like the ones that until last year had kept them from making money off their fame.

In turn, administrators and coaches have grown anxious as they watched their control ebb and the economic dynamics start to change.

Now the Big Ten is borrowing from a strategy that the NFL has relied on to become North America’s wealthiest sports league and will split football games among multiple broadcast networks, with Fox, CBS and NBC each armed with sought-after time slots.

Beyond transforming the Big Ten into a powerhouse of football scheduling, the contract’s sheer value will give the league and its members a measure of stability in the years ahead. The conference’s expiring agreement is worth about $2.6 billion over six years; the new arrangement will take effect next July.

The Big Ten’s deal calls for Fox, the dominant shareholder in the Big Ten Network, to have many of the signature football games from a league that already includes 14 universities, including eyeball-drawing brands like Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State, and will add Southern California and U.C.L.A in 2024. Fox will also air games on the Big Ten Network and FS1.

But unlike the Southeastern Conference, which signed its rights over to Disney and its web of platforms, including ABC and ESPN, the Big Ten elected to reach agreements with broadcasters beyond Fox.

CBS, whose long relationship with the SEC is nearing its end, will ultimately fill its Saturday afternoon time slot known for matchups from Southern football havens with games from Big Ten hot spots like Nebraska and Wisconsin.

NBC will choose a Big Ten contest to broadcast, often in prime time, and broaden its college sports offerings beyond the Notre Dame home games it already airs under a separate deal directly with the university. Peacock, NBC’s streaming platform, will also show Big Ten games.