Fox, Big 12/11/10 Sign TV Deal

The Big 12 Conference and Fox Sports announced a 13-year cable TV deal..

Sports Business Journal is reporting that the contract, which starts with the 2012 football season, will pay the conference $90 million a year. The Big 12 also has a deal with ABC-ESPN running through 2015-16 that would raise the conference's total TV rights revenue to a reported $130 million annually.

The 40 Big 12 regular-season football games that will be carried by Fox nearly doubles the number under the current agreement(s). Most games will be distributed through the regional FSN networks- which reaches more than 85 million homes. Several other games will also be scheduled on FX, which is in 99 million households.

Every Big 12 home football game will be broadcast on ABC, a Fox network or the new Longhorn Network. Big 12 schools will have the option to retain rights to one home football game for distribution as they see fit.

Odds are, that the Pac-10/11/12 will go to the FCSPacific channel for the Pac's own network over time. It will also not surprise the HQ if the Big 12/11/10 gradually works its content to the FCSMidwest channel. This would still leave the FCSAtlantic channel for any and all incidental Fox programming and/or reruns. This would also trim the extra content that is already shown on the FCS chain- boxing out the smaller schools that have their current space there.

More when we know more...

This now leaves who for the open market...???

Big 12 closing in on its own TV Network

Big 12 (with only 10)/Courtesy: csmonitor.com

((ht: sportsbusinessdaily.com))

Hmmm. Sure seems like the cable networks are throwing a ton of money at NCAA Power conferences.

Word is now coming out that the Big 12 and Fox are about to finalize a $60 million a year TV rights deal. That deal would create a channel for only 8 of the leagues 10 teams. (Yeah, its confusing). Texas has their own deal with ESPN for their own network and Oklahoma is planning on having their own too.

Mind you, Texas and Oklahoma will still get their cut of this deal too.

Read the story from SportsBusinessDaily.com RIGHT HERE

The funniest part of this is they may not be able to call it "The Big 12 Network", in part because their would only be 8 teams participating in it...and there's only 10 teams in the league. Confused, yeah. You should be.

We don't begrudge the league for making a deal like this and it should tell you how much money the cable networks actually have when you consider the amounts of money they are throwing around. The only question at this point is when will all the "Power" NCAA conferences have their own networks and when will viewers be subjected to an endless loop of re-runs of Gymnastics since they won't have a whole lot of "Big-Ticket" programming (Football), to choose from.