SBJ Unpacks: Big 12’s Monster of a deal

Tonight in Unpacks: The Big 12 and Monster are entering into a $20 million sponsorship for football and men’s and women’s basketball, one that involves naming rights and jersey patches, reports SBJ’s Ben Portoy.

Also tonight:

• IOC votes to lift Russia suspension, change Winter Games disciplines
• Angel City FC hires The Team to sell kit, facility naming rights
• What’s next for World Cup rights?
• Op-ed: How U.S. sports leagues hope to win the world

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where Abe Madkour discusses Rogers Communications consolidating its power and influence over Canadian sports, why Full Swing makes sense for Versant, the NBA testing free-throw rule change to speed up games and more.

The Big 12 is preparing to announce one of the most sweeping conference sponsorship agreements in college sports history.

The league has finalized a multiyear deal with Monster Energy worth around $20M annually to make the company the “entitlement partner” of the Big 12 football and men’s and women’s basketball regular seasons, Sports Business Journal has learned.

The agreement centers on two marquee assets: a co-branded Big 12/Monster jersey patch that teams will wear in football and men’s and women’s basketball, and co-branded field and court logos that will appear on playing surfaces.

The Big 12 football and men’s and women’s basketball regular seasons will also be dubbed “Monster Energy Big 12 Football” and “Monster Energy Big 12 Basketball.”

The deal -- which Big Commissioner Brett Yormark is planning to unveil on Tuesday during his annual address at the league’s football media days -- is expected to pay member schools around $1M annually, multiple league sources said. Monster also will cover the costs of installing the new logos, expenses that won’t reduce schools’ annual distributions.

The Monster deal will not preclude Big 12 members from selling their own commercial jersey patches. However, Monster does have exclusivity in the energy drink category, meaning, for example, a school could not sell a Red Bull patch.

“I said four years ago we’d be ‘open for business,’” Yormark said in an interview with SBJ this week. “And I certainly think we have been.”

The Big 12 under Yormark, a former NBA and Roc Nation executive who came to the league in 2022, has been among the most aggressive entities in college sports in exploring new commercial revenue levers.

The agreement grew out of an existing relationship between Yormark and Monster Chief Partnerships Officer Mitch Covington, who worked together during Yormark’s Roc Nation tenure. Monster became the conference’s official energy drink in late 2025, and discussions expanded this year into a far broader commercial partnership.

“We’ve already got a built-in trust because we’ve done business in the past and pretty much throughout Brett’s career,” Covington told SBJ. “That really makes it an easier decision for us.”

The on-field and court logo integration is effectively an expansion of the league’s previous deal with Monster and has been under discussion since the beginning of the year

Big 12 ADs eventually met to discuss the agreement in early June, voting to give Yormark the authority to compose a long form contract draft, sources told SBJ. The deal was finalized and signed over the last week.

While the deal is currently just centered on the regular season, the patches could eventually be featured during the postseason.

The College Football Playoff has held conversations around creating a commercial patch policy, as SBJ reported in January. The expectation is schools would be able to carry regular season sponsorship patches into the CFP, though exact determinations are still being worked out by a committee that, coincidentally, is being chaired by Yormark.

That said, Monster is already slated to be featured prominently in the coming days as the naming rights sponsor of Big 12 Football Media Days, which begin Tuesday in Texas.

“This is an important next step in the commercial growth of the conference,” he said. “We are looking to maximize our controlled inventory to drive value for our member institutions.”

Monster deal creates nuance for Big 12 schools, MMR partners, among others

The Monster deal is a major moment for college sports given the assets involved, but also emblematic of the friction between conferences, schools and the legacy companies that have long held control over the commercialization of the ecosystem.

Multimedia rights partners like Learfield, Playfly Sports and JMI Sports have generally considered sponsorship inventory like jersey patches and field logos to be assets that fall under their jurisdiction. However, the Big 12 and Yormark contend the field/court logo and patch that feature its branding are conference assets the league office ought to be able to monetize.

Learfield -- which previously sold corporate sponsorships for the Big 12 before Yormark brought those efforts in-house in 2023 -- currently has multimedia rights agreements with nine of the league’s 16 members.

Playfly, meanwhile, has multimedia rights deals with Baylor and UCF, along with representing Cincinnati and BYU on national sales.

“I think anyone in our business that is buying marketing rights from schools and putting up, in many cases, guaranteed revenues back to the schools and athletic departments have to be considerate of is this devaluing our bids or the value of what we would be buying should this be allowed to continue to occur to where there’s consolidation [of rights],” Playfly CEO Craig Sloan told SBJ. “I don’t think the individual schools win in that case.”

Learfield provided SBJ the following statement when asked about the Big 12’s deal with Monster and potential ramifications it might have:

“Based on discussions with the conference, it is our understanding that this is a naming rights sponsorship of Big 12 football and basketball, and that this new patch simply replaces the current conference patch on football and basketball jerseys. In only six months, we have successfully sold and announced several jersey patch deals with Big 12 partners, and we look forward to continuing that successful track record within the Big 12 and beyond.”

The other crucial nuance brought up by multiple league sources around the Monster deal is its impact on individual schools’ pouring rights agreements.

Around half of the Big 12’s 16 members have deals with Pepsi, per data compiled by AD Vantage, including Colorado, Kansas, Kansas State and TCU. Any required activations that would be part of the conference’s agreement with Monster -- which is partially owned by Coca-Cola -- could thus create issues around exclusivity within those contracts.

Sources said the Big 12 also communicated with Nike and Adidas throughout the process.

“We want to partner with big brands that not only come with the appropriate financial resources, but can activate us and help grow the Big 12 profile and narrative,” Yormark said. “It’s critically important that we do both.”

The Monster deal remains a landmark achievement for the Big 12 and its commissioner, while creating a new bullet point for those working to commercialize within the ecosystem, despite the complexities.

Conferences and schools have never been under more pressure to drive increased revenue as roster costs push into the $50M range at the highest rungs of major college football. Sponsorship dollars have subsequently become paramount to the financial success and, ultimately, on-field success of programs across the country.

Yormark has been as vocal a proponent as any in the industry around driving increased sponsorship dollars at the conference level -- efforts that include major deals with Allstate, PayPal and Edward Jones.

The Big 12 previously explored a conference-level naming rights deal with Allstate. That foray didn’t come to fruition, but the Monster agreement offers a look at how leagues might explore similar efforts with less drastic ramifications like integrating a sponsor into the name of a conference.

Yormark did land a deal with RedBird Capital in April that will infuse the conference office with $12.5M of capital to help drive commercial development and business growth, while schools are afforded a one-year window to take on a credit line of $30M. So far, no school has publicly exercised the credit option.

How might Monster and the Big 12 measure the success of their initiative?

“One time, one of our CEOs told me ‘Hey, I don’t really need to see the numbers. We’ll know if it works or not,’” Covington recounted. “That’s kind of the way we are here [with the Big 12 deal]. I think we’ll know if it works.”

The IOC will allow Russian athletes to compete again following a decision by its executive board on Tuesday to provisionally lift the suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) that has been in place since early 2022, when the country invaded Ukraine. The organization had maintained that suspension through the Paris and Milan Cortina Olympic Games.

The IOC ended the suspension after it said its legal commission determined that the ROC no longer included regional sports organizations that would be governed by Ukraine’s national Olympic committee.

The decision has been expected as other sports organizations, including World Aquatics and World Gymnastics, have allowed Russian competitors back into the fold, and as the IOC has moved to a more neutral stance under Kirsty Coventry.

During the session last month, which marked the first anniversary of Coventry taking office, the IOC changed the Olympic Charter to further emphasize political neutrality, a move largely seen as a precursor to allowing Russians back into the Games.

“We made it clear that we wanted to ensure all athletes have the possibility to compete at the Olympic Games and not be held responsible for their government’s actions, and I believe that this is what this decision speaks to,” Coventry said. “It allows for Russian athletes to take part in sport competitions, but we’ve also been very clear that we do not condone any violence and war around the world.”

Despite several sanctions dating back to 2016, when a widespread doping regime run by the country during the Sochi Games was revealed, at least some Russians have competed as neutral athletes at Games since.

The IOC maintained that it would not organize events in Russia or invite government officials. It will decide later whether to allow the Russian flag, anthem and colors at the Games, protocols that have been limited for a decade since Russian’s doping system was first revealed.

In its first NWSL assignment, The Team has been hired by Angel City FC to sell two of the club’s commercial assets -- its next front-of-kit sponsorship and naming rights to its Thousand Oaks performance center.

The Team’s North American rights sales group will lead the assignment, with support from The Collective, the company’s women-focused impact and advisory practice. The rights sales group has about 100 people on staff globally, including roughly 25 in the U.S. across L.A., N.Y. and Denver. A core team of five will be dedicated to the Angel City, said Brian Millman, VP of rights sales and brand strategy for the agency.

The Collective previously advised Angel City on strategy and valuation. For this project, it will continue to serve as a strategic and insights resource for The Team’s rights sales group.

Angel City was most recently valued at $340M, according to Forbes, making it the most valuable NWSL club.

Backed by The Collective, Millman said the agency will develop a “bespoke go-to-market narrative” around Angel City’s fanbase, cultural relevance, L.A. footprint and growing global profile. According to Millman, Angel City merchandise has been sold in all 50 states and 56 countries, and the front-of-kit and performance center positions are being targeted to blue-chip brands in the U.S. and abroad. Angel City’s current front-of-kit agreement with DoorDash is expiring.

The Thousand Oaks performance center, which opened in January 2025, has not had a naming-rights sponsor since it opened. The facility -- the former home of the NFL’s Rams -- is billed as the largest dedicated solely to an NWSL club, with 50,000 square feet of indoor space on a nine-acre site.

Millman declined to provide a timeline for when deals might be completed or to discuss financial targets and specific brands. He said The Team has seen “a lot of interest” since the opportunity went to market.

Angel City FC recently named former Red Bull North America executive and Zevia CEO Amy Taylor as its new CEO, effective July 27, succeeding co-founder Julie Uhrman, who moved into an adviser role earlier this year.

When a senior NBCU exec told SBJ that conversations were already underway regarding the company’s interest in Spanish and English rights to the FIFA World Cup, it naturally created some waves within sports media circles.

Some of that has to do with rights not being determined yet for the 2030 tournament, and we’re less than four years away. That’s a big change from the last time a FIFA rights shift happened in 2011, when Fox and Telemundo secured rights to the 2018 and 2022 events by outbidding ESPN and Univision, who then became lame-duck broadcasters of the 2014 tourney.

But even as times, tech and consumer behavior have changed, would FIFA want all rights under one house? “It would be unlikely to see FIFA split the rights between two broadcast partners again,” said Ray Warren, the former president of Telemundo Deportes who now runs Warren Sports Advisory. “[FIFA has] learned a lot and I don’t see them splitting the rights. So if Telemundo were to acquire the [Spanish] rights, I believe NBC would have to participate.”

For the current iteration of the World Cup, reports have Fox paying around $485 million for English-language rights and Telemundo paying around $460 million for Spanish rights.

Bidders galore

Warren feels the platform that companies like Fox and NBCU should worry about the most is Netflix, as the streamer has tremendous domestic and global reach. Netflix already has rights in English and Spanish to the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2027 and 2031, and it has brought on former Telemundo EVP/Sports Eli Velazquez to advise production.

Warren also did not want to discount Prime Video or Apple as potential landing spots for U.S. rights given their inroads in global sports. But then another question emerges on whether FIFA wants the one-stop-shop approach or prefers spreading out any risk by having multiple companies with rights.

Meanwhile, Fox Sports President Eric Shanks has publicly said his company remains interested in keeping rights to the event. Longtime sports media consultant Ed Desser feels that even with the likes of Netflix and NBCU lurking, it’s premature to write off Fox as a legit contender.

“I don’t know if they have back-end rights that put them in an advantage position for bidding next time around, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they did,” Desser said. “And don’t forget Fox … [which] has added both Tubi and Roku. So does that change the equation to some extent for them? Perhaps it does.”

Comcast-NBCU split complications?

The timing of NBCU’s claim it may also go after English World Cup rights was puzzling to some, as it was just days after Brian Roberts declared that Comcast and NBCU would be split up. That raised some questions as to whether NBCU actually would go big for a new event like the World Cup without the backing of Comcast.

But for Desser, he doesn’t see NBCU having to necessarily call in reinforcements to pursue rights like this.

“Even after a spinoff, NBCUniversal will be a significant company in the media business,” Desser said. “There’s no real reason that they would be disabled from making such a bid.”

Desser noted exclusivity for a company like NBCU would see benefits in production costs and ad sales, because a single purveyor of games means a network can charge a premium since they won’t be competing with another ad seller (network) for the same event.

Sport has always been television’s most reliable draw. Unlike drama, which can be streamed at leisure, or news, which can be consumed in clips, sport demands live attention. It cannot be spoiled, paused until convenient or reduced to a highlight without losing something essential. That quality has made it the last true fortress of broadcast television, and it is now the centrepiece of one of the most strategically significant battles in global media.

The question I am asked most often, from broadcasters in Europe to platform executives in Asia, is this: Are American sports leagues genuinely gaining ground internationally, or is it marketing noise? Having spent considerable time studying the data across more than 100 markets, my answer is unambiguous. The expansion is real, it is measurable and it is accelerating. But it’s also more complex, and more market-dependent, than the leagues themselves would perhaps like to acknowledge.

The NFL’s decade-long bet on Europe

The NFL’s story in Germany is the clearest illustration of what sustained investment in free-to-air television can achieve. When Pro7 broadcast the first full NFL season in Germany in 2015-16, it reached around 13 million unique viewers. A decade later, following RTL’s acquisition of exclusive free-to-air rights from the 2023-24 season onward, that figure has grown to nearly 23 million.

What is particularly striking is the shift in who is watching. In 2015-16, men age 14-49 accounted for 62% of hours viewed. In 2025-26, that figure has fallen to 34%. The NFL in Germany is no longer a niche property for its traditional demographic. It has become a mainstream television event.

The UK picture is more nuanced. Broadcast hours have grown dramatically, from 1,163 hours in 2015-16 to over 4,000 in 2025-26. Cumulative reach has more than doubled, from 11.3 million to 24.6 million viewers. Yet average live audiences have actually declined slightly. The sport is reaching more people, but the average viewer is spending less time watching live. That is the classic fragmentation challenge with viewers split across more platforms and types of content, ultimately delivering thinner individual audiences.

Asia: A continent of different questions

The Asia story is where the data becomes most instructive, and it requires a different set of questions entirely. In China, a market with 67,000 broadcast hours of sport annually, the NBA reaches a cumulative audience of 271 million. These are extraordinary numbers built over a decade of investment and cultural alignment that no American league has replicated without that long runway.

Japan offers perhaps the most compelling recent case study of how a single athlete can shift the dial for a sport’s international reach. MLB viewing there surged in 2024 and 2025, reaching 680 million hours viewed, a level that dwarfed anything the previous decade had produced and a period that coincides with Shohei Ohtani’s move to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Whether that correlation reflects causation is a question the data alone cannot answer, but the timing is difficult to ignore.

In India, WWE commands the largest US sport TV audience, with 211.2 million viewers watching at least one minute of a program in a season, 30% of them between age 15 and 30. In the Philippines, the NBA Finals regularly achieve market shares above 25%, competing directly with the domestic Philippines Cup for prime-time audiences. This shows the genuine, deep embedding of American sports into local television cultures.

The real playbook for going global

Going international is unambiguously a growth driver for TV sports viewing; the evidence across Europe and Asia confirms it. But the mechanics of that growth vary so significantly by market that a single playbook cannot apply.

In Germany, a decade of consistent free-to-air presence built an NFL audience that now rivals mainstream domestic sport. In Japan, one athlete’s arrival coincided with an MLB viewing surge that a decade of broadcast strategy had failed to produce. In India, WWE built a mass audience not through live sport in any traditional sense, but through the storytelling conventions of entertainment television. In the Philippines, the NBA succeeded by becoming genuinely local, a sport that schoolchildren grow up watching, not a foreign import they discover as adults.

What these trajectories share is not a common strategy, but a common requirement: sustained commitment over time, combined with a willingness to understand what audiences in each market want, rather than assuming they want what American audiences want. Rights deals open doors, but time and local knowledge are what build the audiences that sit behind them.

The data makes it clear that the returns on that investment are real and substantial, but the timeline is measured in years and decades, not broadcast seasons. For those that adopt this approach, the numbers speak for themselves.

Frédéric Vaulpré is senior vice president at Glance, which provides content and audience insights for global media professionals in television and media.

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