What Is Driving New Potential Pac-12 TV Media Deals?
Transcript
00:00 [MUSIC]
00:02 But Rick, the update is this, the momentum for Oregon and
00:07 Washington to go to the Big Ten has apparently been zapped overnight.
00:12 And the PAC 12 is meeting as we speak with Commissioner George Kliukov
00:18 to potentially to sign a grant of rights deal that would all be
00:23 around their new media contract starting in 2024.
00:27 So Rick, make sense of it for us.
00:29 What are the PAC 12 presidents discussing right now that would tie them to the
00:33 conference at least for the foreseeable future?
00:35 >> First of all, you gotta understand how significant that is because these are
00:40 executives and it's 728 in the morning where they're meeting.
00:43 I'm sure they're meeting out the west coast.
00:45 So it is a big deal.
00:47 And by the way, they've been up all night, all of them have been up all night.
00:50 Cuz there's nothing more important than this.
00:52 And a couple of perspective things.
00:54 You remember years ago, Oklahoma and Colorado had a case and
00:59 others went to the Supreme Court and
01:01 the ruling was the conferences could create their own TV deals.
01:05 And man, that spawned a whole series of musical chairs round one.
01:09 Round two was about 12 years ago when the Rutgers,
01:12 let's call it the Rutgers Maryland, bizarre move.
01:15 And we were talking during the break and
01:18 Kevin made a good comment that it just doesn't sound right.
01:21 Well, it didn't sound right then.
01:22 These are not Big Ten schools, but they became Big Ten schools.
01:25 When you look at the rhetoric then, you look at the rhetoric in phase one,
01:29 it's exactly the same right now and what's driving it.
01:32 The ever changing TV contracts, we know that.
01:35 Now, as to what happens, your assessment is really good
01:39 relative to where the PAC 12 could be.
01:42 They'll take anything right now that guarantees stability.
01:45 If Apple is the deal, remember, MLS, Apple, I'm now in the home of Messi.
01:51 That was made by Apple giving him some revenue off the top.
01:54 But let's remember that the Apple revenue, at least with the MLS deal,
01:58 some of it is speculative, meaning based on total viewership and
02:02 not the rights fees like the big networks do.
02:06 Now, if you want to do facilities and you want to plan for the future and
02:09 you want to borrow against some capital funds universities have,
02:12 that's difficult to borrow against because it all depends on future
02:16 percentages of this and percentages of that.
02:19 And so the Apple deal may be the best they can get, but it is not a panacea.
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