With the can being kicked down the road for this long with the Pac-12 Conference and a new media rights deal, it appears the clock is running out on the conference being able to feature more than half of its slate of football games on linear television when the new deal begins.
The big five networks are seeing their available inventory to air Pac-12 games disappear, and that’s brought on an outlook that any new deal will see a streaming giant get the majority of the games according to CBS’s Dennis Dodd.
With two less member schools following the departure of UCLA and USC to the Big Ten, the Pac-12 will likely be bringing in less TV money on the next new rights deal, but the hope is that the conference will see the annual figure somewhere around the same $31.6 million number the Big 12 reached in its new media rights deal.
But there’s a belief that networks like ION and CW could potentially come in and help get the Pac-12 over that 50% number. ION is owned by Scripps, which recently launched a sports division that has media rights in mind. Meanwhile CW is owned by Nexstar Media Group, with their largest sports property being LIV Golf.
So where do you see them ending up I would bet Apple with each school having a dedicated feed for Olympic sports and major sports like Football basketball volleyball baseball and soccer having tiers of rights being sold to another outlet so Maybe ESPN gets a tier of football basketball and soccer then PAC12 network gets a tier of the TV sports(the ownership of that network will be part of the rights as well) the rest of the big 4 sports rights would revert to Apple or a local partner for each school