Three networks will own Big Ten broadcasts as league announces mega TV deal
At Big Ten Media Days on July 26, Kevin Warren aggressively and bullishly talked openly about his confidence in the conference's expansion coast-to-coast and how the league plans to open the door to new markets even further.
"We will have a footprint in the three major media markets from New York to Los Angeles to Chicago, which will allow us to be even bolder when it comes to corporate partnership and activation,” Warren said. “So I'll look forward to building a very successful and robust business in that area.”
On Thursday morning, August 11, that business officially took its next step. The Big Ten announced its new mega media rights deal.
The big bottom line?
It's a deal that is worth $7 billion, according to a report by Pat Forde, and will feature Big Ten football games on Fox, CBS and NBC while ESPN is being shut out from broadcasting the conference's football games. The deal calls for the Fox-CBS-NBC trio of national networks – plus NBCUniversal's Peacock – to begin broadcasting Big Ten games beginning in 2023 and running through the 2029-30 season. BTN and FS1 will also continue to broadcast league games.
Beginning in the fall of 2023, the Big Ten will broadcast one of its top games of the week on Saturday at noon ET on Fox (Big Noon Saturday) while CBS will air a game at 3:30 ET, and NBC will air a game in the primetime slot. The SEC's media rights deal with CBS expires following the 2023 season as ESPN will begin airing those conference games exclusively beginning in 2024.
In 2023, CBS will air seven football games in addition to regular season and postseason men's basketball games. In 2024, the network will begin broadcasting up to 15 regular-season games per season, including an annual Black Friday game in the afternoon. NBC, meanwhile, will broadcast 14 to 16 games on TV each season as it introduces "Big Ten Saturday Night" beginning in 2023. Each NBC broadcast will also be streamed on Peacock.
Additionally, Fox, CBS and NBC will rotate the broadcasts of the Big Ten Championship Game for football each year:
FOX: 2023, 2025, 2027, 2029
CBS: 2024, 2028
NBC: 2026
This is likely not the final big media rights agreement that the Big Ten will announce over the next several years as the conference is almost certainly not done expanding even further. That expansion is something that Warren strongly alluded to just three weeks ago at the podium in Indianapolis.
“I get asked every single day what's next?” Warren said. “It may include future expansion, but it will be done for the right reasons at the right time with our student-athletes, academic and athletic empowerment at the center of any and all decisions that we will make regarding any further expansions.
“We will not expand just to expand. It will be strategic, it will add additional value to our conference, and it will provide a platform to even have our student-athletes be put on a larger platform so they can build their careers but also that they have an opportunity to grow and learn from an education and from an athletic standpoint.”