The reimagined Pac-12 Conference is extending its broadcast rights agreement with the CW as it prepares for its final season as a two-team conference.
It will stick with the Nexstar-owned network through the 2030-31 academic year. The two sides have been together since the start of the 2024 college football season, when Oregon State and Washington State signed a one-year deal with the network.
Financial details of the new CW extension were not disclosed. Octagon, which has advised the Pac-12 since last November, negotiated the new agreement, as well as the 2025 football deals and the extension with CBS for 2026.
The CW will broadcast 13 college football regular season games per year along with 35 men’s basketball and 15 women’s basketball contests (also regular season). In addition, the CW will be the new broadcast home for the women’s basketball conference semifinal and championship games. All 66 of these games will be produced by the conference’s media arm, Pac-12 Enterprises.
CBS, however, will be the anchor media partner beginning in 2026. In June, the Pac-12 signed a five-year extension with CBS Sports that will kick in as the new member schools join the conference. The five years were tacked onto the one-year football-only deal for 2025. The CW and ESPN also signed one-year deals for the 2025 football season for Oregon State and Washington State.
CBS and streamer Paramount+ will host a minimum of three regular season games for both football and men’s college basketball, as well as conference championship games for both sports. The rest of CBS’s regular-season telecasts for the two sports will air on CBS Sports Network. (Despite airing sports since the mid-2000s, CBSSN is not rated by Nielsen.)
Pac-12 commissioner Teresa Gould said that when it worked with its media advisor Octagon on new media deals, discussions with prospective partners were going to move at different paces. Although the CW provided safe harbor for the conference after the 2024 realignment that saw ten teams leave the conference, it was CBS that was given the anchor partner status.
“One of the top priorities for us was to provide national broadcast exposure for our championship games across football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball,” she said in an email. “CBS was eager to be part of what we were building and we were excited to form that partnership that allowed for us to solidify incredible exposure.”
The conference’s media partnerships will be announced at a later date, which Gould said would include more coverage of women’s basketball as well as its Olympic sports.
The rebuilt Pac-12 will include five schools from the Mountain West (Boise State, Colorado State, San Diego State, Fresno State and Utah State), Gonzaga from the West Coast Conference and Texas State from the Sun Belt Conference.
Texas State gives the Pac-12 eight all-sports schools with football teams, the minimum that conference needed to remain in the Football Bowl Subdivision (Gonzaga does not have football). The Bobcats officially joined the conference on June 30, when their board of directors approved the financial transaction to pay a $5 million exit fee to the Sun Belt. That fee would have doubled to $10 million if it was paid on July 1 or later.
Additionally, the conference is bringing on Dallas Baptist as an associate member for baseball starting in 2026-27. The Patriots are one of five programs that have appeared in the each of the last 11 NCAA tournaments, alongside LSU, Florida, Oklahoma State and Vanderbilt.
For 2025, the Pac-12 renewed its pact with the CW and rekindled old flames with ESPN and CBS. ESPN was a long-time rights holder to the old Pac-12 until 10 schools left the conference before the 2024-25 academic year. CBS Sports, now under the management of Skydance after the purchase of Paramount was made official on Aug. 11, broadcasted Pac-10 games in the 1980s.
CW’s sports portfolio, which includes NASCAR’s Xfinity Series, ACC football and WWE NXT, could reach even more homes by the time the Pac-12 extension kicks in. The deal comes over a week after Nexstar announced plans to buy smaller broadcasting rival Tegna, making the nation’s largest broadcast station owner even bigger. The Nexstar/Tegna merger is still subject to regulatory review before closing in the second half of 2026.
(This story has been updated in the sixth paragraph to clarify which telecasts will air on CBS Sports Network.)
