The Big 12 Championship Game will be on ESPN and ABC through 2024 as part of a new deal the two sides signed earlier this week. John Ourand and Michael Smith of Sports Business Daily report that the agreement also gives the conference a major presence on ESPN+.
ESPN paid $40 million for the new deal. It will be added to the current rights deal it has with the Big 12. The conference’s member schools will each receive around $22 million annually.
A lot of Big 12 basketball is coming to ESPN+. “Eight of the 10 schools will provide more than 50 exclusive events per year, including at least one football game, any spring football game and any basketball game that is not on an ESPN linear network,” wrote SBJ. Baylor, Kansas, Kansas State, and Oklahoma State all have football games scheduled to air on ESPN+ in the 2019 season.
The two schools not contributing content to ESPN+ will be Texas, whose third tier games go to the Longhorn Network, and Oklahoma, which has its own local rights deal. Those schools will show up on the streaming service as away teams though for contests outside of football or basketball.
