How Big 12 Has Already Impacted Arizona Wildcats Football Exposure
While the Arizona Wildcats football team is off this week, they did learn on Monday when they will play their Big 12 Conference opener on Sept. 28.
The Big 12 announced that Arizona would play Utah at 7:15 p.m. mountain on ESPN, with the game set for Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City.
Oddly, the Wildcats (2-1) have already played one Big 12 team, as they’re coming off a 31-7 loss to Kansas State last week. That game had already been set as a non-conference game before Arizona joined the Big 12. As a way of uncomplicating the league’s four-year conference schedule, the two teams kept the game a non-conference affair.
That contest, which was on Friday, was a standalone game on Fox and drew nearly three million viewers.
According to the Tucson Star, Arizona’s television alignment so far this year is a stark contrast to its last season in the Pac-12 Conference.
Per the publication, the Wildcats played their first four games on the Pac-12 Network and the SEC Network. While the SEC Network is ESPN-owned, it’s not one of its major outlets. The Pac-12 Networks were regional based on the team’s market. The Star also made the point that Arizona played just four games on ESPN last year.
So far this year, the Wildcats have played games on ESPN, ESPN+ and Fox.
The Big 12’s two television partners are ESPN and Fox, with ESPN generally getting the first choice of games each week. It’s possible that most of the Wildcats’ football games will be on either a major ESPN network (ESPN, ESPN2 or ESPNU) or on Fox. The same is likely to be true for the men’s basketball team, which will likely be ranked in the preseason Top 25.
This has been one of the benefits of the move to the conference to this point. While football and basketball games will generally be on ESPN or Fox, all of the conference’s third-tier rights (Olympic sports) are owned by ESPN and will be on Big 12 Now, which is on ESPN+ and available through the network’s streaming service.
So, while it’s not over the air, fans only need a subscription to view not just Arizona Olympic sports, but Olympic sports for all 16 Big 12 schools.
The Pac-12’s inability to reach an agreement on a television deal led to the break-up of the conference, as 10 teams moved to different leagues. The Big 12 already had a deal in place that would distribute $31.7 million per school per year in television money. A pro rata clause in the TV deal allowed the Big 12 to bring in Arizona at that revenue share.
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