Big 12 men’s basketball has a new home — or rather, its new home has a new sub-home.
On Tuesday, Sports Business Journal reported that Fox had sublicensed approximately 20 of its allocated men’s basketball games to Peacock, the streaming service for NBC.
Last year at Big 12 media days, commissioner Brett Yormark estimated, when asked by Heartland College Sports, that Fox would get roughly 50 games from the Big 12 inventory in its first year of broadcasting Big 12 basketball.
Like the ESPN sub-licensing deals with CBS and Turner, this puts Big 12 games on another broadcast outlet.
NBC will get non-conference and conference games, per NBC’s release. It is a multi-year agreement.
Here are three thoughts on the deal.
The Strategy
Yormark has made no secret that he believes that college basketball as a property is undervalued and wants to take it to market as its own TV contract when the league’s latest deal is up in 2030-31. Right now, the Big 12 will be the second power league to go back to market for a TV deal. The Big Ten’s deal is up in 2030.
To build a basketball-only deal that is worth it for the league, Yormark needs suitors. This sub-license deal creates another potential suitor. NBC is already working with the Big Ten and the Big EAST. How much more money the Big 12 makes off the sub-license isn’t clear.
That makes five TV partners or sub-partners for the Big 12 — ESPN, Fox, CBS, Turner, and NBC/Peacock. If you think that’s crazy, it’s not. When the Big EAST was at its height in the late 1980s, then-commissioner Dave Gavitt spun five different TV deals at the same time.
I don’t think Yormark’s desire for a basketball-only deal is one of those “come hell or high water” moments. He’ll do it if the value is there. But to create the value, he must whet the appetite. This deal lets NBC/Peacock get its feet wet.
The Games
The CBS sub-license is a bit different than the Peacock. CBS and its CBS Sports Network are linear channels. Several of the games ended up on CBS proper. The rest on CBSSN. The Tiffany Network got games with Kansas and Iowa State. CBSSN got a lot of Oklahoma State, Kansas State, and TCU. But if you had cable, you could watch all of them. I was about to with YouTube TV last season.
Peacock is streaming only. Fox has its linear channel along with its Fox Sports channels, which are linear and can stream. My guess is Fox will sub-license the games it considers least desirable. In other words, viewers are unlikely to see Houston or Kansas on Peacock — unless NBC wants to flex it onto its linear channel. That doesn’t appear to be the deal here.
We won’t know until the conference schedule is released.
The Viewer
It’s debatable whether this really serves the viewer. If you don’t already have Peacock, you’ll need to get it (professionally speaking, I have no choice).
Big 12 fans, generally, aren’t thrilled about ESPN+, though I think that’s more about the fact that the other three power conferences have their own linear network and the Big 12 does not. That’s not Yormark’s fault, and it’s not easily fixed. Given the shrinking sports broadcast dollar, convincing one of the Big 12’s partners to go in on a linear network is basically dead.
Just a few years ago, just about every Big 12 basketball game was on ESPN or ESPN+. Now, there is at least some channel choice, and some games that should get a better showcase probably will. Plus, CBS cares about the product and production value. If NBC/Peacock cares the same way, it’s a win for the league.
But it means training the viewer to channel-hop, and that’s hard enough to do for football.
So, the average viewer is unlikely to enjoy this change. Yormark and the Big 12 are playing a long game, though, and the only way to enhance the league’s basketball future from a broadcast standpoint is to try.
In case you’re wondering, Peacock is $10.99 per month if you want the games.
You can find Matthew Postins on Twitter @PostinsPostcard.
