Report: ESPN to sublicense Big 12 football, basketball games to TNT as part of WBD-NBA settlement

This year, as the College Football Playoff expands, ESPN will sublicense first-round games to TNT Sports as part of a five-year agreement. That partnership is now expanding after the Warner Bros. Discovery settlement with the NBA.

ESPN landed a deal to sublicense Big 12 football and basketball games to WBD, the Wall Street Journal reported. Games would air on TNT, as well as on Max. An announcement is expected early next week.

In addition, ESPN will receive the rights to “Inside the NBA,” the iconic pregame and postgame show on TNT starring Shaquille O’Neal, Charles Barkley, Kenny “The Jet” Smith and Ernie Johnson. The fate of the fan-favorite program came into question when the NBA inked a media deal with ESPN, NBC and Amazon Prime. Now, it appears ESPN will be the home of the show, which will air throughout the season.

For TNT, losing the NBA meant the network had to fill the void in the live sports space. One step was securing a sublicensing deal with ESPN for the CFP, which begins this year for first-round games. ESPN will still produce the games, but they will air on TNT airwaves.

That was TNT’s first foray into the college football space. Now, the network will also have Big 12 basketball and football games to pair with its new NASCAR media deal.

Inside Brett Yormark’s approach to Big 12 media rights

The Big 12 will begin an extension of its media rights deal with ESPN and FOX in July 2025 after agreeing to a $2.28 billion deal shortly after commissioner Brett Yormark took over. It’s the third-richest media rights deal of the Power 4 conferences behind the SEC and Big Ten, and Yormark called it a crowning achievement of his first year as commissioner.

Yormark has also shown a desire to be innovative in the TV space, and even floated the idea of separate media deals for football and basketball down the road. He hasn’t hid his goal to be the top basketball conference in the country, and he spoke highly of where things stand at Big 12 Media Days.

“As I mentioned earlier in my comments, we got stronger at basketball,” Yormark said in July. “As good as we were, we got stronger. That being said, when we did our new TV deal, we gave ourselves optionality to think about the next cycle. And we’ll be back in the market in January of ’30. And we have a lot of optionality. Do we go back into the market as we’ve historically done, or do we bifurcate football from basketball? Only time will tell.

“But I’m bullish on the whole deal. I’m bullish on football, I’m bullish on basketball, I’m bullish on Olympic sports. And everything we do now sets the tone for that moment in January of ’30. And with the help of ESPN and FOX, they will grow our brands, and they will grow our narrative and best position ourselves for that moment.”