US college sports’ Pac-12 conference has agreed to a major extension of its domestic broadcast partnership with Paramount-owned commercial network CBS Sports.
This new deal begins in 2026, and runs through the 2030-31 campaign, covering at least three Pac-12 college football games and men’s basketball fixtures, as well as the relevant Pac-12 championship games from each sport.
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These games will air on the linear CBS Sports Network, as well as the Paramount+ OTT streaming service, with additional fixtures to be disseminated on linear TV throughout the season.
This follows on from CBS Sports agreeing to a short-term deal with Pac-12 in April, to cover the 2025 Pac-12 football campaign, which will begin on August 23 and will only include two colleges, Oregon State and Washington State.
The Pac-12 has been rebuilt over the past year after 10 of its 12 members left to join the ACC, Big Ten, and Big 12 in recent years. Now, Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State, Utah State, and Gonzaga have joined or are preparing to join the two original schools, Oregon State and Washington State.
Reportedly, this new CBS agreement will be worth annually between $56 million and $80 million, or between $7 million and $10 million per school per year.
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By GlobalDataThis would place the conference below what it earned prior to the 2024 realignment, when it boasted a $20.8 million per-school per-year average payment from Fox and ESPN, but around double what the Mountain West Conference currently receives.
Before the 2026 season, the Pac-12 also needs to add at least one more football-playing member (as Gonzaga is basketball only) to fulfill NCAA requirements, with the reported frontrunner, Texas State, set to dilute that figure further.
The departure of those 10 members came following a series of botched Pac-12 media rights agreements across 2022 and 2023 (meant to kick off during the 2024 season) – with the ACC, Big Ten, and Big 12 all, therefore, able to offer member colleges more lucrative deals than the Pac-12 that year.
The Big 12, for example, has a $2 billion deal with Fox and ESPN in place through 2036.
Given the amount of poaching fees and exit fees the Pac-12 schools have had to pay to realign to the remodeled conference ahead of the 2026-27 campaign, this deal may not be worth it.
For the colleges, which have mostly defected from the Mountain West Conference, the uptick in media rights fees of around $4 million per year will be well received, but they will still potentially struggle to dent the combined $145 million in fees the schools collectively owe for the realignment.
Given that the CBS deal now ties these schools into the same contract through 2031, it may mean austere times ahead for the Pac-12 members unless further media agreements for other fixtures not covered by CBS can be secured.
