Big Ten announces blockbuster media rights deal and warn "We are not done expanding”
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The whole college football world had been forced to sit and wait for the Big Ten to finish their media rights negations in order to have an understanding of what the future of the sport holds.
Well, that moment became officially official as sources told Sports Illustrated that the deal is a seven-year agreement and included multiple broadcast partners worth more than $7 billion plus escalators. The deal begins in 2023, and is expected to produce more than $1 billion annually.
However, that wasn't even the biggest headline of the day as one Big Ten source expressed:
"We are not done expanding.”
There was no specification as to who or when, but those five words have now put the rest of the college football world on edge. The Pac-12 who has essentially been a sitting duck this entire time is expected to have some schools who might be targets, as Stanford, Oregon, and Washington have all been linked to the Big Ten at some point.
We will just have to sit and wait to see what the moves of the conference are, as adding teams such as San Diego State or SMU is a possibility but not if the Big Ten comes knocking at the door of Pac-12 schools first.
The new deal starts with the 2023–24 athletic season, and will see Big Ten sports be available across six different platforms: Fox and its affiliates, FS1 and the Big Ten Network; CBS, and NBC and its streaming site, Peacock.
