Southern Conference announcing new strategic partner

The SOCON has announced they will be teaming up with new strategic partner TrailRunner Sports on its media rights process and basketball tournament-site planning

MACON, Georgia – (41NBC/WMGT) – The Southern Conference has announced it will be teaming up with a new strategic partner. The SOCON will be working with TrailRunner Sports on it’s media rights process and basketball tournament-site planning.

“We’re just super excited to start work on these two projects,” said TrailRunner Managing Director Jamie Zaninovich, the former commissioner of the WCC and COO of the Pac-12. “Both are really important for the Southern Conference and have a lot of potential for helping them extend their exposure and drive awareness of the league.”

The SoCon media rights deals with ESPN, CBS Sports and Nexstar each run through 2026, while ESPN has the most significant portion of that package. Commissioner Michael Cross told SBJ conversations will begin in earnest over the coming academic year.

“[We] had had some ongoing conversation going back to my first few months in the role here,” Cross said. “We started talking about things that are coming up — strategic planning, all these types of things — and ultimately, I felt like the timing to get into this was right about now. I didn’t want to go through [our last year of the TV deal] without clarity about where we’re going to be with TV and where we’re going to be for our championship.”

On the basketball tournament side of things, the existing agreement with the Asheville Buncombe Regional Sports Commission to host the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments at the Harrah’s Cherokee Center-Asheville expires after the 2026 events.