Sports
Big East, ESPN team up again on a 6-year digital media rights deal Big East, ESPN team up again on a 6-year digital media rights deal
The Big East Conference has signed a new, six-year digital media rights agreement with ESPN, conference officials announced Tuesday.
The Big East Conference has signed a new, six-year digital media rights agreement with ESPN, conference officials announced Tuesday.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Under the agreement, ESPN will add hundreds of live Big East events, including “a minimum of 75 women’s basketball and 200 Olympic sports events,” which will stream on ESPN+ annually beginning in the 2025-26 academic season.
The extra events will also include a minimum of 25 non-conference games annually for Big East men’s basketball.
The deal comes as ESPN plans to offer its flagship programming on an as-yet unnamed direct-to-consumer digital streaming platform, which it expects to launch this fall. The new platform will be separate from but include its current ESPN+ digital offering, which shows some sports and non-live sports content.
The deal reunites the Big East Conference with ESPN, which held the broadcast rights to the conference from 1980 to 2013. It fills a gap for the sports and entertainment network that was left after it lost the media rights to the Big Ten conference to CBS, Fox and NBC in 2022.
“This exciting partnership with ESPN reinforces our commitment to placing Big East teams front and center on the leading digital sports platform,” Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman said. “Streaming on ESPN+ gives all 22 of our sports — especially women’s basketball and Olympic sports — the visibility they’ve earned and the access our fans expect.”
“We’re pleased to welcome the Big East back to ESPN,” said Nick Dawson, ESPN senior vice president, programming and acquisitions. “This agreement returns one of the country’s premier conferences and its tradition of excellence to ESPN platforms.”
The deal with ESPN comes just over a year after the 11-team conference announced a new six-year TV deal that begins with the 2025-26 season. That deal was estimated at $480 million, with annual rights payments to each school in the range of $75 million to $80 million per year.
That new contract includes coverage on Fox Sports (Fox, FS1, FS2), as well as on NBC Sports (NBC, Peacock) and TNT Sports (TNT, TBS, truTV and Max).