The PAC-12 will not start its next media deal until the current one with ESPN and FOX expires in 2024. That doesn’t mean that the conference isn’t planning for the future and starting negotiations now.
According to a story by John Ourand and Michael Smith of Sports Business Journal, conference executives are pursuing a deal with a digital giant. While Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google, were not active in recent negotiations for the PGA and Major League Baseball, PAC-12 Networks president Mark Shuken says that college sports does appeal to those companies.
“Several of them have come to us and said that they want to be in this space,” he told SBJ.
Apple in particular has expressed serious interest in the conference. Ourand and Smith report that the tech giant wouldn’t be satisfied with a digital rights package. The company reportedly wants the PAC-12’s primary rights deal. That deal is currently split between ESPN and FOX, who pay a combined $250 million for it.
The PAC-12 already has a relationship with Apple. The PAC-12 app is available for Apple TV users. “We’ve also been working with them on experimenting with different products that we have,” Shuken says.
Shuken adds that while choosing Apple as its primary rights holder in 2020 may seem strange, the PAC-12 is bracing for a very different media landscape in 2024 when the deal would begin.
For Apple, live sports could be a way to separate its streaming service in what has become a very crowded market. The company has not yet settled on a financial model for carrying live games.
