The Big 12 Conference has signed a deal to expand its rights agreements with ESPN, which will now broadcast every Big 12 football championship game through the 2024 season and create a Big 12 platform on ESPN+, the company’s direct-to-consumer subscription sports streaming service.
In the new agreement, the Big 12 will add the conference title games in 2019, 2021 and 2023, The network already owns the rights to the other championship games, all of which will appear on either ABC or ESPN.
In addition, eight of the 10 school in the league will ship hundreds of games across multiple sports through their tier 3 rights to ESPN+ beginning this year, including one regular-season football game, as well as men’s and women’s basketball, baseball, softball, soccer and volleyball games.
Texas will keep its rights on the ESPN-owned Longhorn Network. Oklahoma’s rights will remain with Fox Sports, as part of a previous deal. Both schools, however, will be featured on ESPN+ as road teams.
“Our institutions are thrilled with the exposure all 10 athletics programs will receive through this Big 12-branded offering,” Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby said in a statement. “Our goal was to be forward thinking in the use of technology to create a conference-branded platform and believe this partnership ideally positions the Big 12 now and into the foreseeable future.”
The ESPN+ agreement will start for Baylor, Kansas, Kansas State and Oklahoma State beginning this year. Iowa State, TCU, Texas Tech and West Virginia will join in 2020.
The deal runs through 2024-25, when the rest of the league’s TV rights contracts will expire.