BIG EAST media rights deal provides exposure, security

“FOX Sports basically took a chance on the BIG EAST when the BIG EAST reconfigured in 2013 and came into being with the current configuration of schools and without football … So we’ve been in business with them,” BIG EAST commissioner Val Ackerman told The Next. “It’s now been 11 very fruitful years. They’ve been an outstanding partner.”

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That FOX media rights package, signed during a period of major transition for the conference, was light on women’s basketball coverage. Longtime conference foes and national women’s basketball powerhouse programs UConn and Notre Dame left for the AAC and ACC, respectively. While programs like DePaul and Villanova had some national success, much of the conference’s women’s basketball cachet had diminished in realignment. Since then, UConn rejoined the conference (2020) and programs like Villanova, Creighton and Marquette have elevated their women’s basketball profiles.

With its 2013 FOX contract set to expire at the end of this upcoming season, the BIG EAST signed a new media rights deal. Starting with the 2025-26 season, FOX Sports will expand its coverage as the conference’s lead network provider — with NBC Sports and TNT Sports also covering BIG EAST basketball for the first time. Across all platforms up to 65 regular season women’s basketball games and all BIG EAST Tournament matchups will be covered, tripling the sport’s current coverage.

“Everyone at FOX Sports is thrilled to continue our long-standing relationship with the BIG EAST, one of the nation’s top basketball conferences and a pillar of our college hoops lineup,” said FOX Sports CEO and executive producer Eric Shanks. “It’s a privilege to showcase these spectacular student-athletes and institutions alongside our new partners, NBC Sports and TNT Sports, while also fortifying our role as a leader in college sports.”

The new media rights deal provides the BIG EAST with long-term revenue for its member schools during what has been another turbulent phase of conference realignment.

“The conference, on behalf of our schools, receives the rights fee from the networks that goes into our conference budget. And then we, like other conferences, have a way of distributing our net revenue,” Ackerman told The Next. “We have certain expenses we incur here on behalf of the 11 schools. You know, in terms of the work we do with lining up officials, paying for championship events, doing other programming for our schools, there’s a cost to that — we deduct that from the gross and then the net revenue we distribute back to our schools.”

Revenue distributed to BIG EAST member institutions is re-invested by each school into its athletics programs. Although each school has discretion to decide how the funds are spent, the money generally covers expenses like operations, staffing, facility maintenance and scholarships. The funds benefit not only men’s and women’s basketball but also other BIG EAST men’s and women’s athletic programs. This revenue is crucial for a non-football conference whose member institutions cannot access lucrative revenue sharing opportunities through football television contracts.

“Football schools, they have advantages because of the football money that they can direct to other sports. … At the same time, they have football expenses that we don’t have, right? — football money goes back to football. So because we don’t have those expenses to worry about we can direct our money to other sports,” Ackerman said.

The “new” BIG EAST, established in 2013, boldly marketed itself as a basketball-centric conference in an evolving football-centric college athletics landscape. Over 10 years later, the conference, during another turbulent period of realignment in college sports, has positioned itself to remain among the most-televised college sports conferences. It’s a testament to the legacy of BIG EAST basketball, and will allow fans to follow that legacy for years to come.

“It’s this gets your successes out there,” Ackerman said of the new media rights deal. “[It] creates some desirability for recruits, to come and play for you. So the exposure as well as the revenue is important. It’s an important outcome of your media rights situation.”

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