After the Big Ten’s media rights deals, what’s next?

On Thursday, it finally happened – the Big Ten announced their new round of media rights deals with CBS, Fox, and NBC. ESPN was notably boxed out in this round, ending a decades-long partnership between the network and the conference. And while the Big Ten’s rights were a significant domino falling, it will impact plenty of other conferences and networks in the near and short-term.

The media rights for four other conferences will now move into the spotlight: the Big 12, Pac-12, Mountain West, and football-free Big East.

The Big 12 and Pac-12 are the more significant deals, as each conference’s rights are currently split between ESPN and Fox. Will the two companies continue to work together after their split on the Big Ten? ESPN has saved money by not retaining the Big Ten’s rights and could conceivably funnel some of that money to the Big 12 and Pac-12, potentially for a larger package of games to gain an advantage over Fox. The value of both conference’s rights has been damaged due to the defections of Oklahoma and Texas to the SEC and UCLA and USC to the Big Ten

When it comes to the Big 12, I’d fully expect the conference to stick with one or both of its current partners. There haven’t been many rumblings about other potential bidders, and CBS and NBC hooking up with the Big Ten probably takes both out of potential Big 12 bidding. Each was looking to fill one window on its daily schedule, which both did with their Big Ten rights deals. Adding the Big 12 wouldn’t fit with that strategy.

As for the Pac-12, even with the loss of the two LA schools, there has been interest in the conference from tech companies. Fox’s interest seemed to be dissipating even before the announcement of the Big Ten’s deal, opening the door for ESPN to potentially split the rights with a company like Amazon or Apple and absorbing much of the Pac-12 Networks’ Olympic sports content into ESPN+.

The Mountain West is another interesting one, with its rights split between CBS and Fox. This package is attractive because it’s relatively cheap (currently, $45 million per year on a six-year deal), and provides live content from the Mountain and Pacific time zones, much like the Pac-12. The Mountain West is also an anchor of CBS Sports Network’s live game content, and if CBS wants to keep the network around going forward, retaining the Mountain West’s rights would be key to that. If Fox loses out on, or declines to keep, their chunk of Pac-12 rights, the Mountain West would be a great way to keep later time slots filled.

The Big East doesn’t get talked about often in these conversations since the conference doesn’t sponsor football, but it has plenty of value. Fox is nearing the end of a 12-year, $500 million rights deal with the conference should be popular for several reasons: the low price point, the large markets in the northeast and midwest who have members in the conference, and the on-court success of its schools. Could ESPN look into prying the Big East away from Fox to fill holes in its basketball schedule caused by the Big Ten’s departure?

And then there’s Notre Dame. I feel like the Fighting Irish are in a great position now that NBC has brought in the Big Ten because the whole purpose of that move was to create doubleheaders with Notre Dame games. If NBC wants to pay up, I’m sure Notre Dame would be glad to stay. If not, I’m sure the school would look into joining a conference (likely either the Big Ten or ACC) and getting a similar windfall. For NBC, losing access to those Notre Dame games would be brutal, given how much of their college football strategy over the years has been built around the Irish. If Notre Dame joins the ACC, their NBC appearances would be limited to non-conference games against Big Ten opponents that weren’t plucked up by another network. If they joined the Big Ten, they’d still probably show up on NBC, but not as part of a doubleheader, and not every time they’re at home. It would truly defeat the purpose of NBC partnering with the Big Ten, and that’s why I think the two parties will continue their relationship.

One area that could give some companies an edge in this bidding is streaming. While they’re not the main element of any deal, the Olympic sports included in media rights deals have to live somewhere, and that place is almost always a streaming platform. Fox’s lack of a dedicated subscription-based streaming platform means that the company will likely have to partner with another company in rights deals, as it did in the Big Ten deal, which included many of those Olympic sports going to Peacock.

But with NBC likely done with bidding for rights aside from Notre Dame and CBS seemingly not keen on going in on another major conference, that leaves ESPN and ESPN+ in a pretty good position to at least get some more content going forward. Sure, Amazon and Apple have plenty of experience in the streaming world, but would either company be all that interested in adding hundreds of Big 12 or Pac-12 Olympic sports to their services? It’s an interesting question, and if not, perhaps ESPN could use it to get a more favorable chunk of the pie.