[the Talking Can]

deal is done

The Big 12 Conference announced Friday it has reached an agreement on a 13-year media rights deal with ABC/ESPN and Fox.

The deal is worth $2.6 billion, an average of $200 million per year and worth $20 million per school, industry sources told ESPN.

The package will run through the 2024-25 school year. ABC/ESPN and Fox will share the league's football inventory, while ABC/ESPN will be the exclusive provider for Big 12 men's basketball.

ESPN spokesperson Josh Krulewitz declined comment.

"The stability of the Big 12 Conference is cemented," Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said. "We are positioned with one of the best media rights arrangements in collegiate sports, providing the conference and its members unprecedented revenue growth, and sports programming over two networks."

The deal includes a "grant of rights" agreement, meaning if a Big 12 school leaves for another league in the next 13 years, that school's media rights, including revenue, would remain with the Big 12 and not its new conference.

The grant of rights is huge for the Big 12's stability. Just last year, it appeared the league would implode by losing Texas and Oklahoma to the Pac-12. However, both schools stayed. The Big 12 did lose Missouri and Texas A&M to the SEC but replaced them this season with West Virginia and TCU.

The Big 12's $20 million per school average is slightly behind the Pac-12's $21 million per school media rights deal and on par with the Big Ten's per school average. The Big 12's deal also will rank ahead of the SEC's and ACC's per school averages -- at least for now. The SEC is expected to have a more lucrative deal in the coming months.

The new deal means the Big 12 and Pac-12 are the only conferences with telecast agreements with two over-the-air national networks in ABC and Fox.

The Big 12 joins the Big Ten and Pac-12 as the only conferences with grant of rights media deals.

http://espn.go.com/college-sports/st...ox-sources-say