The Pacific-10 Conference agreed to a 12-year television contract with Fox and ESPN on Tuesday valued at $2.7 billion, which will quadruple the conference’s current media rights and will jumpstart its own network.
According to a report by The Associated Press, the lucrative contract will go into effect at the beginning of the 2012-13 football season, and will be worth about $250 million per year, which guarantees each of the 12 schools in the newly formed Pac-12 roughly $21 million. This past season the Pac-10 made less than $60 million in media rights.
The formal announcement is expected to be made at a news conference with Pac-10 Commissioner Larry Scott in Phoenix today.
Elsewhere in college athletics, the Atlantic Coast Conference recently inked a $155 million per year deal, while the Big 12 reached an agreement with Fox that improved its annual media package to about $130 million. The Pac-10, which will be officially renamed the Pac-12 when it welcomes Utah and Colorado into the conference this summer, also topped the SEC ($205 million) and Big Ten ($220 million).
Unlike the Big Ten deal, where Fox has 49 percent ownership share, the Pac-12 will own its entire network, allowing for complete control of its content, and will ensure it keeps all the profits, should the network be successful.
According to the Associated Press report, Commissioner Larry Scott’s three goals heading into the negotiations — increasing revenue, getting more exposure and starting a Pac-12 network to provide an outlet to broadcast non-revenue sports and to help brand the conference — were each achieved by securing this deal.
The report also said as part of the agreement to give up a historically larger share of television revenues, Southern California and UCLA will each receive a $2 million premium for any year the media rights do not reach $170 million.
The conference is also expected to launch a digital network for games to air online that are not being played on ESPN or Fox. Reports show that Fox and ESPN will split the rights to college football games, while men’s basketball games will be split between ESPN and Fox Sports Net, with ESPN also getting rights to some Olympic sports that will normally air on ESPNU.