The TV Contract: The Pac 12 has a new TV deal that began this academic year with both ESPN and Fox Sports that is for 12 years and worth $2.7 billion.
The deal includes full revenue sharing among member schools, a departure from the past when UCLA and USC had received a larger share. They do get a $2 million premium should media rights ever fail to reach $170 million a year.
The deal allows both ESPN and Fox to air the football championship game and the basketball conference tournament. They will alternate yearly between the two networks.
Like most recent deals, the new deal pushes more games into primetime with ESPN airing a guaranteed 4 games per season on Thursday/Friday nights and ESPN and Fox airing 5 primetime games between the two on Saturday nights through the course of the football season.
The Pac 12 has also launched their own television network, ala the B1G. At launch in fall of this year, the network reached 48 million homes, though most of it was laregly regional and had difficulty finding homes on many national providers. Seems it would be a tough sell outside of the local markets for the Pac 12.
Pac 12 and Expansion History: Expansion within the Pac 12 has been rather bland compared to the other conferences. After adding the two Arizona schools in the 1970s, the Pac 12 didn't add members until adding Colorado & Utah in 2011. Both schools were more natural geographic fits even though they weren't on the Pacific coast.
It was widely reported and believed the Pac 12 would expand again and take the Oklahoma schools and 2 Texas schools. These rumors originally prompted Colorado to jump at an invite and leave the Big 12. On two occassions, it appeared the move to 16 would be complete but never came to fruition.
In September of 2011, Pac 12 Commissioner Larry Scott put to bed for the time any further expansion. The reasoning was purely financial as member schools would have saw revenue cut if they had to share with new members.
What Hath Expansion Wrought: Quite simply, a league championship game for football and that's about it. Utah and Colorado have had some football success but nothing sustained. Arizona and ASU had their greatest football years prior to joining the Pac 8. Colorado made the NCAA basketball tournament its 1st season in the Pac 12. Utah finds itself in a massive rebuilding project for hoops.
The Pac 12 has been quiet on the expansion front as of late. With a new TV deal, the Big 12 seems to have found its footing. Some people think it'll be hard to see any schools leave through their current TV deal since moving west would probably cut revenues short term. If the Pac 12 gets itchy to expand, their options seem limited to schools such as BYU and Boise State. Best guess is this one will be the Pac 12 for the near future and will thrive financially. Most schools seem happy with less mouths to feed.
There may be some desire to expand the Pac 12 network but being on the west coast will always work against them and any expansion seems unlikely past the Mississippi and leaving them in flyover country. That being said, they are the dominant force in the nations biggest state and adding a Texas market would increase eyeballs on their product but is it worth it to the current members? I doubt it.
No comments:
Post a Comment