ESPN, Current Big East Formally Announce Media Rights Deal

ESPN and the to-be-renamed Big East Conference today formally announced a seven-year multimedia rights agreement through the '19-20 season. Terms of the deal were not announced, but reports have put the deal at around $130M. With the agreement, ESPN will have exclusive worldwide distribution rights across all media. All sports will be covered by the deal from '14-15 through '19-20, following a bridge year for the conference’s basketball rights in '13-14. The net will have rights to all basketball games – including the conference championship – that are not covered by CBS.

ESPN Senior VP/College Sports Programming Burke Magnus said that the deal allows for a limited sub-license to other national broadcasters or RSNs. Big East Commissioner Mike Aresco said a network deal for basketball rights that “dovetails” with the ESPN deal will be announced “in all likelihood next week.” Aresco declined to name the network involved. Meanwhile, he did say the new name for the conference could be determined as early as April.