USC fans, you’re going to be part of the Big Ten in two years. You obviously need to know what the long-term plan is for the conference in the media rights realm.
Pac-12 columnist and reporter John Canzano, at his Substack, explained why the Big Ten arrived at a seven-year media rights deal which will run through the 2029-2030 college sports cycle, instead of locking in a longer deal.
• The Big Ten’s deal was reported by some to be a total of $8.4 billion over seven years. That figure sounded inflated to those who work in the industry. I asked two media experts to crunch numbers and deconstruct the deal. They both came back with estimates that place the total value of the deal in the $7.5 billion to $8 billion range. One guessed that the involvement of the Big Ten Network, 60 percent of which is owned by Fox, may be causing the accounting discrepancy.
Regardless, it’s a massive windfall for members. As Dennis Dodd of CBS pointed out on Twitter, the last media rights deal for the Big Ten was a seven-year deal with a total of $2.64 billion.
• The Big Ten signed a seven-year agreement in this round of media rights. Why seven years and not eight or 10? Because it gets the conference back to market before the SEC. That was apparently important to Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren.
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