Pac-12 media rights disaster: no Plan B even as Big 12 votes to include Arizona
Thursday night, the Big 12 voted to approve the inclusion of the University of Arizona to the conference. The Arizona Board of Regents still has to approve the move, which it hasn’t yet done. Arizona State University President Michael Crow, a longtime defender of Larry Scott and someone clearly vested in the preservation of the Pac-12, doesn’t want to leave. Yet, he can see the conference crumbling around him. He knows this media deal isn’t generating sufficient revenue. He knows the ASU community wants to get out of the Pac-12 and leave this sinking ship before it descends to the bottom of the Pacific (12) Ocean.
The writing is on the wall.
Crow wants to delay this move as long as possible, partly to see if George Kliavkoff can come up with an alternative rescue plan, but mostly due to optics. He wants to be seen as a guy who defended the Pac-12 to the very end and didn’t relish moving to the Big 12 at all (which would be true enough).
Crow’s move reeks of desperation, but it does buy Kliavkoff at least a little time to come up with a Plan B. However, are there any signs of that alternative plan? Is there any indication Kliavkoff or the Pac-12 are doing anything to stave off extinction? Our friends at Ducks Wire are just as bewildered as we are.
Let’s look at the details of this unfolding media rights catastrophe in the Pac-12, which is now on its deathbed for reasons which were entirely preventable:
MATT ZEMEK, TROJANS WIRE
One of the (many) most striking things about the media rights deal is that it is dependent on people buying subscriptions (to Apple). Pac-12 Network was based on people paying the extra money to find an outlet which wasn’t on a lot of carriers, including and especially (and infamously) DirecTV. Did the Pac-12 CEO Group learn a single thing from the Larry Scott experience? Clearly not! It’s so painful to watch. This was Kliavkoff’s best move? This was the fruit of all these many months of negotiations?!
MATT WADLEIGH, TROJANS AND BUFFALOES WIRE
I strongly feel the Pac-12 won’t land a media rights deal by the end of August. At this point, it’s going to be difficult for a partner to lock in, especially with so many programs rumored to want out. If Oregon, Washington, Stanford, Arizona, and others do leave, it won’t be an appealing conference.
ZACHARY NEEL, DUCKS WIRE
At this point I am growing less confident in the fact that we will actually see a media rights deal announced for the Pac-12. What seems more likely in my head is that the Pac-12 presidents and chancellors see the deal, reject it, and jump ship to other conferences before we actually see some hard and fast numbers from George Kliavkoff.
TURNER
Jon Wilner had mentioned the possibility of a side deal with Turner (TBS/TNT), which is now under the Warner Bros. corporate umbrella, but we haven’t seen anything. Is the Pac-12 really going to die with an Apple-only deal and no side deals with Turner, ESPN, The CW, Amazon, or anyone else?
ALL EGGS IN ONE BASKET
It’s crazy that the Pac-12 appears to be relying on one outlet for its deal.
Everyone agrees the Pac-12 was never going to get top dollar from any one outlet, so the strategy always seemed to require flexibility and diversity. Get a modest deal from three or four different outlets, serving different needs — revenue, exposure, accessibility — with different media partners. Together, those three (or four) deals would create enough income to survive.
PAC-12 NETWORK
Selling Pac-12 Network and turning it over to a media partner would have been a way for the Pac-12 to realize added revenue — nothing huge or transformative, but enough to keep the conference alive.
SAN DIEGO STATE
Remember: San Diego State was supposed to give the Pac-12 added football game inventory. The Aztecs made the national championship game in basketball, but football is still the revenue king. SDSU was supposed to boost the value of a media rights deal. Someone tell us why the Aztecs weren’t added in late June.
SMU
SMU would have given the Pac-12 the Dallas market and more football inventory. Someone tell us why SMU wasn’t added in late June alongside San Diego State to boost the value of a media rights deal.
COLORADO
With Colorado gone, the Pac-12 has one less team and therefore one less outlet for football inventory. The ability to get a reasonable price point in a media deal has been kneecapped.
ACC
The Pac-12 needs to arrive at an arrangement with the ACC for nonconference football games at minimum, maybe a temporary merger under the ESPN umbrella if it wants to be more ambitious. The clock is ticking, however.
FLORIDA STATE
Florida State wants out of the ACC. The Pac-12 should step in and find a way to give FSU more money with some nonconference games that sweeten the pot for everyone.
NO FORWARD THINKING
We begin where we started: Where’s the Plan B? Was the Pac-12 really not prepared for a worst-case scenario? That’s what all those board meetings and strategy sessions were supposed to create: preparedness for the worst. No one seems to be doing anything while the conference dies a very public death.
Maybe there’s an 11th-hour intervention, but we’re not seeing signs of it.
It’s so Pac-12 it hurts.
ON EARTH 2
Our final thought for now:
Imagine an alternate universe — Earth 2, as people like to say — in which Colorado and San Diego State and SMU are all on board.
The Pac-12 would have had three added schools with a presence in three different time zones and three valuable regional TV markets: San Diego (Southern California), Denver-Boulder, and Dallas. That’s a lot of TV sets. It’s a lot of different areas of the country. It’s a lot of time zones. It’s a lot of added football games to put in a media deal.
There could be 12 schools in the Pac-12 right now. Instead (as of early Friday morning), there are only nine with Arizona about to make it eight.
How did the conference not add San Diego State and SMU at the earliest possible opportunity? It’s insane … and it might cost the Pac-12 its very existence.
