Big Ten now accepting media rights offers

The Big Ten has never really had any kind of exclusive media rights deal for their regular season football games, but it certainly looks like that could be changing in the coming months. The conference is reportedly looking into accepting media rights offers in the near future.

The Big Ten has a media rights contract with ESPN for their regular season games and one with FOX for the Big Ten Championship Game. FOX also owns 51 percent of the Big Ten Network and it is expected they they will split the media rights with ESPN.

FOX is expected to get a bigger cut of the distribution, which would allow them to provide more live content to FOX Sports 1.

CBS Sports also has a contract with the conference for tournament semifinal and championship matchups. CBS also has a handy relationship with the SEC to broadcast the SEC Game of the Week, and it should not be expected CBS makes any significant push for Big Ten football.

ESPN currently pays the conference $1 billion over the next ten years, which was a big contract at the time it was signed. However, the ACC, SEC and Pac-12 all saw their conferences’ media rights values soar over $3 billion since then.

Is it time for the conference to look for more money? Let us know in the comments below.

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*Featured Photo (above) credit to USA TODAY Sports

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