New Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark told anybody that would listen in recent weeks that his conference’s new media rights deal would be more lucrative than the one before it.
He flew to New York and Kansas City in what amounted to a media blitz, touting what he thought would be a stable conference long after heavyweights Texas and Oklahoma leave for the SEC in 2025.
“I know the media felt that we would go backwards with the loss of Texas and Oklahoma,” Yormark said on Oct. 18. “But as I said last week in New York, and I’ll continue to say, this conference is bigger than any two institutions. And I think our [TV] partners understand that. They see the value.”
This weekend, it appears he was right.
The Big 12 struck a six-year contract extension with ESPN and Fox worth $2.2 billion, as was first reported by the Sports Business Journal and later multiple other outlets.
Running through the 2030-31 season, Big 12 members will reportedly receive an average of $31.7 million annually — up from an average of $28 million on the last deal. This does not include revenue from potential bowl game payouts, College Football Playoff revenue and NCAA revenue. With those figures included, annual revenue could approach $50 million per school, according to multiple reports.
Notably, for incoming member BYU, the Cougars will become a full-share member until its third year in the league.
Beyond just the revenue number, Yormark achieved two other major goals in this media rights deal. His first was to leapfrog the Pac-12 in getting a deal done, giving his conference more stability in conference realignment. And the second was to have this deal be short enough to where the Big 12 will be at the negotiating table early when the next round of talks begin.
As for the first objective, Yormark purposefully brought the Big 12 to the negotiating table almost two years earlier than contractually expected, in the spring of 2024.
Knowing the Pac-12 had pushed up its negotiations, the Big 12 did not want to be cut out of the money. Also, in securing a media rights deal first, Yormark could tether together his conference members as the threat of conference realignment looms. Not to mention, having a firm revenue number is a powerful negotiating tool to lure potential new members into the Big 12.
A pro rata clause is expected to be in this deal, according to The Athletic, in the event that the conference expands.
On the second objective, this deal ending in 2031 would once again put the Big 12 in negotiations before both the SEC and ACC renew their deals. The Big 12 felt it was at a disadvantage this cycle by being last to the negotiating table out of the major conferences. It wanted to change that in the next round if possible.
For BYU, a team moving away from football independence into the Big 12 in all sports, the annual revenue will be a large increase from its current margins. The exact increase, because BYU is a private school, is not known.
Overall, the addition of BYU, Cincinnati, Houston and UCF to the Big 12 appeared to help the conference more than originally thought. When former commissioner Bob Bowlsby added those four teams, it was still widely believed the conference would take a significant hit in average revenue because of the Texas and Oklahoma departure.
The Big 12 will still see a decrease in revenue from the last year of its current television contract (when both schools are in the league) and the first year of its new deal (when the two national brands depart). However, the decrease is less than expected, per the Sports Business Journal. And the average annual revenue over the lifetime of the deal is more, according to multiple reports.
At one point in 2021, Bowlsby openly feared the new media rights deal without Texas and OU could cut the revenue by 50%.
