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The Big 12 announced an agreement Friday with FOX Sports and ESPN on a 13-year contract reportedly worth $2.6 billion to televise football and men's basketball through 2024-25.
As part of the agreement, both companies will jointly share the conference’s football air and cable rights.
FOX will have over-the-air access to Big 12 football with a minimum of six games annually on broadcast television and provides FOX with enhanced game selections through 2015.
“We’re very pleased to continue our long-running relationship with the Big 12, clearly one of the most successful and esteemed collegiate athletic conferences in America,” said Randy Freer, co-President and COO of FOX Sports Media Group, in a statement. “This expanded partnership gives FSMG several Big 12 football games to showcase as part of our first-ever over-the air schedule on FOX, while also providing a substantial number of games for our other platforms.
"It’s a win-win for everyone concerned.”
ESPN and FOX share rotating game selections beginning in 2016.
"The stability of the Big 12 Conference is cemented,'' Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said in a statement. ''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 TV deal was already in the works when Bowlsby, the former Stanford athletic director, was named commissioner in May.
It came after two summers of uncertainty when it appeared that the Big 12 was on the brink of collapse. The conference lost four schools to three other conferences, but the BCS league now seems secure for years to come.
There are 10 schools in the league now. TCU and West Virginia began play this season, offsetting the departures of Texas A&M and Missouri to the SEC this year. Nebraska previously went to the Big Ten and Colorado to the Pac-12.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
