Pac-12 Announces CBS As ‘Anchor’ in New Media-Rights Deal

On Monday, the Pac-12 announced it extended its media-rights agreement with CBS Sports for the lifespan of a five-year deal running until the end of the 2030–31 season. The media-rights deal will give CBS Sports and Paramount+ access to marquee football and basketball games, as part of a package that will ultimately include multiple networks.

The news is yet another major step for the Pac-12, which has been in the process of an unprecedented rebuild since the league fell apart two summers ago. “Our goal with this process was to find transformational partnerships for the new Pac-12, and throughout our discussions and time together it became more and more clear that a partnership with CBS Sports would be just that,” Pac-12 commissioner Teresa Gould said in a statement.

The deal will serve as a continuation of the package that began this season to broadcast Washington State and Oregon State football games. It guarantees that the league football championship game and men’s basketball tournament championship game will air on CBS and Paramount+. At least three regular-season football games and men’s basketball games will air on CBS each year. Football and men’s basketball will also be shown on CBS Sports Network. 

Financial details were not disclosed, as the league is still in the process of selling other rights in the media marketplace. CBS Sports did not, however, sign a deal for all of the media rights to sublicense to other networks (as is the case with the College Football Playoff and ESPN, for example). Instead, the Pac-12 is selling the rest of its rights independently, with the help of Octagon.

It’s unclear who else might be part of the full package. But the current 2025–26 package, which includes ESPN and The CW, may provide a clue—a Pac-12 source previously told Front Office Sports that the one-year deal could serve as a potential test-run. 

“Exposure for the new Pac-12’s media partnerships will be key to realizing and increasing our collective and individual overall values,” the league wrote in a fact sheet distributed to reporters.

Since being ripped apart in 2023—ironically, because of a less-than-ideal media-rights offering—the Pac-12 has reinvented itself. In the fall of 2023, Washington State and Oregon State, the two lone members, sued to keep the assets and intellectual property of the league. They finalized a scheduling agreement with the Mountain West for football and an affiliate agreement with the West Coast Conference for other sports, as well as a modest media deal with The CW and Fox, to keep the league afloat while it searched for more members. They also hired new commissioner Teresa Gould, who has guided the conference since the spring of 2024.

Then, last fall, the Pac-12 announced the addition of five Mountain West schools: Boise State, Colorado State, Utah State, Fresno State, and San Diego State. (The league is still embroiled in litigation with the Mountain West over poaching fees, but the two are currently engaging in mediation.) The Pac-12 has also since added Gonzaga.

Going forward, the Pac-12 is still searching for at least one more FBS football-playing member, as the NCAA allows for a two-year grace period for a conference to find eight football-playing members to maintain its FBS status. Texas State has been rumored as a potential option. The Pac-12 may announce expansion before finalizing another deal, or finalize the media package first, a Pac-12 source told FOS. 

The media-rights deal with CBS, meanwhile, is written with the assumption that another full FBS football-playing member will join by 2026.