Big East indications 6-year television deal with Fox, NBC, TNT
Jun 27, 2024, 12:09 PM ET
The Big East Conference will broaden to having games on three networks and see a substantial increase in revenues under a new six-year media rights offer announced Thursday.Fox Sports will stay as the conference’s lead network under the new agreement, which starts with the 2025-26 season, while NBC and TNT will bring Big East games for the first time.The conference’s 12-year handle Fox and CBS expires at the end
of the upcoming 2024-25 season and averaged$41.67 million annually. With the increased income, the Big East ought to also be on better monetary footing with the Power 4 conferences, especially given that it does not have football.The Big East though is considered among nation’s premier basketball conferences and functions two-time defending males’s champion Connecticut amongst its 11 members. UConn also returned to the Women’s Last 4 this past season.Fox signed a deal with the Big East after the 7 Catholic schools separated from the football schools to form a basketball-centric conference in 2013. Butler, Xavier and Creighton also joined the conference, and UConn returned in 2020. The brand-new contract will see more than 150 males’s regular-season games aired, consisting of all league contests and conference tournament games.
It will also see up to 65 females’s regular-season and tournament games, which is more than triple the previous deal.Fox will air a minimum of 80 men’s and ladies’s games, including the conference competition, on Fox, FS1 and FS2 under the new contract. The males’s competition last will also remain on Fox.NBC will get an early start on its Big East handle 25 regular-season men’s games and 5 tournament contests being streamed on Peacock this upcoming season. Starting in 2025-26, Peacock and NBC will carry more than 60 guys’s and females’s regular season and conference tournament games.Fox and NBC likewise carry Big Ten basketball under a rights contract that began this past season.TNT, which airs the NCAA men’s basketball tournament with CBS, will have at least 65 regular-season
games(50 men’s 15 ladies’s) throughout TNT, TBS, truTV and Max. It also marks the very first time TNT will have a package of games with a college conference.