The new-look Mountain West has completed its next television deal, continuing partnerships with CBS Sports and Fox Sports while also adding The CW to its linear lineup and moving the Mountain West app to a paywall service.
The news comes more than a year after five of the conference’s schools announced they were exiting the league to join a rebuilt Pac-12, which will officially return to action as a full Football Bowl Subdivision conference this summer. The MW held its remaining seven schools together, added new members and signed a grant of rights, along with a plan to move its headquarters from Colorado Springs to Las Vegas this summer.
The new-look Mountain West will include Air Force, Grand Canyon (non-football), Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico, Northern Illinois (football-only), San Jose State, UC Davis (non-football), UNLV, UTEP and Wyoming. Hawaii, which was already a football member, will become a full league member in the summer and will no longer have a separate local TV deal for home games.
The new TV deal further stabilizes the conference, as the Fox Sports and CBS Sports agreements last six years, from fall 2026 to summer 2032. The CW portion is a five-year deal with an option for a sixth year. Financials of the deal were not disclosed, but Mountain West commissioner Gloria Nevarez confirmed that legacy conference members will not see a decrease from the previous media rights payout of around $3.5 million per year, which was promised in the grant of rights, whether the money comes entirely from the TV deal or is drawn in part from league reserves.
The status of those reserves remain up in the air, as the Mountain West and Pac-12 are still in a legal fight over almost $150 million in poaching fees and exit fees from the realignment that saw Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State and Utah State join Oregon State and Washington State’s efforts to restock the Pac-12. Last fall, a judge denied the MW’s motion to dismiss the Pac-12’s lawsuit. The sides are in the early stages of discovery. Nevarez declined to comment on the case.
Under the new deal, more than 150 conference events will air on linear TV each year, including around 41 football games, keeping level the previous deal’s ratio of linear TV football games relative to the number of schools.
Fox Sports will air 12 regular season football games on Fox, FS1 or FS2 and will continue broadcasting the football conference championship game. It will also air 20 men’s basketball games across the three networks.
CBS Sports Network will air 14 regular season football games, and at least one game will be aired on main CBS. The league will have 18 men’s basketball games, plus the tournament quarterfinals and semifinals, on CBSSN, and the championship game will air on CBS. Women’s basketball will have two regular season games and the tournament championship on CBSSN. (The games on main CBS will be available to stream on Paramount Plus).
The CW will air 13 regular season football games, 20 men’s basketball games and 15 women’s basketball games. The games on The CW will be produced by the Mountain West, as is the case for other leagues whose games air on the network.
“We’re pleased with the exposure,” Nevarez told The Athletic. “CBS and Fox are ongoing national partners, and The CW is new to the space but definitely committed to building a sports vertical. Having so much more exposure for women’s basketball is also important to us.”
More than 1,000 other live events will continue to be broadcast on the Mountain West App, which will move from a free streaming service to a pay service and will be available on most Smart TV and mobile platforms. Two price tiers will be introduced in July for monthly and annual subscriptions. (The Mountain West was the first conference to have a league TV network, which lasted from 2006 to 2013.)
Nevarez said schools will directly earn money from the number of app subscriptions they drive. The specifics of that arrangement are still being worked out.
“For years, we’ve been building the app, and we’re really proud of the platform and the quality of production,” Nevarez said. “In this day and age of revenue sharing and NIL, we felt it was time to bet on ourselves and put a paywall around it knowing that dollars from subscriptions will go back to the school that brought those in.”
2026 FBS football members
| Mountain West | Pac-12 |
|---|---|
|
Air Force |
Boise State |
|
Hawaii |
Colorado State |
|
Nevada |
Fresno State |
|
New Mexico |
Oregon State |
|
Northern Illinois |
San Diego State |
|
San Jose State |
Texas State |
|
UNLV |
Utah State |
|
UTEP |
Washington State |
|
Wyoming |
For all the drama around the Mountain West and Pac-12’s fight for members, their new TV deals are quite similar in exposure.
The CW has promised 13 regular season football games each for both leagues. The MW will have more football games on CBSSN (14 vs. a maximum of 10 for the Pac-12), but the Pac-12 will have more on CBS (a minimum of three vs. a minimum of one for the MW), and the Pac-12 has one fewer football school. Both football championship games will be on a broadcast network (Fox for the MW, CBS for the Pac-12), and CBS will air both men’s basketball tournament championship games.
The main difference is the third partner. The MW has Fox Sports, while the Pac-12 has a more expansive partnership with USA Sports, which will air 22 football games and 50 men’s basketball games per year. That means all Pac-12 football games will be on linear TV. Games on USA Sports will be produced by the Pac-12. The financials of the Pac-12 deal have also not been disclosed.
Many people around college sports have questioned why the Mountain West and the Pac-12 leftovers didn’t simply merge amid the wave of conference realignment that caused four Pac-12 schools to leave for the Big Ten, four more to join the Big 12 and two to join the ACC. Ultimately, after scheduling negotiations between the Mountain West and Oregon State/Washington State broke down, some of the highest-resourced MW schools preferred to join the Pac-12 remnants, believing they could build a better league with leaner numbers. As a result, the set of FBS conferences outside the Power 4 previously known as the Group of 5 will grow to a Group of 6 in 2026.
“I think one league in the west would be stronger, make more sense,” Nevarez said. “But competition can also make folks stronger and lead to more. It is what it is, and we’re ready for it.”