Welcome to Day 190 of the rebuilt Pac-12’s search for a media rights contract — a process that began immediately after the conference agreed to terms with Gonzaga in early October and brought the membership total to eight.
For the most part, the Pac-12 and its consultant, Octagon, have maintained radio silence while pursuing a deal that will provide acceptable levels of cash for the schools and exposure for the football and basketball programs.
Elsewhere, college sports has been a cacophony of news.
The ACC reached a settlement with Clemson and Florida State that secured the conference’s short-term survival but increased the likelihood of a rupture in years to come.
The Big Ten and SEC have consolidated their control over the future of the College Football Playoff by working to create multiple automatic bids for each of the major conferences.
And earlier this week, a district court judge signaled she intends to approve the settlement terms of a groundbreaking lawsuit that will herald the era of revenue sharing and change the industry’s economic model.
In combination, the developments have set the stage for upheaval across the landscape — not immediately, it seems, but perhaps at the end of the decade or in the early 2030s. The change could take the form of a super league or further expansion by the SEC and Big Ten that ripples across major college football.
Nobody knows what’s coming; everyone knows something’s coming.
How does the fragile terrain impact the Pac-12’s pursuit of the media rights deal required for the summer of 2026 and beyond? Simple: The next five years are an audition for whatever’s next.
The rebuilt conference hopes to both maximize its media revenue and its linear TV exposure opportunities on cable and over-the-air networks. But securing optimal amounts of both might prove difficult.
If forced to choose between 1) less revenue and more linear exposure and 2) more revenue and less linear exposure, the answer is obvious.
Wide visibility is vastly more important given the evolving landscape.
“I would definitely go for the exposure,” retired Fox Sports president Bob Thompson said recently during a wide-ranging conversation on ‘Canzano and Wilner: The Podcast’.
“At this stage of the game, you don’t want to disappear and hide behind some streaming wall. If you have a streaming element, that’s fine. But I don’t think it can be your primary distribution source. You really want to be on some linear over-the-air and cable networks so that you’re front and center in everybody’s minds.”
The dollar signs require context.
Industry experts believe the Pac-12 could generate as much as $12 million per school per year if everything breaks just right and as little as $7 million per school annually if the situation goes sideways. The Hotline views the lower end of the revenue range as more likely with the final calculation dependent, in part, on the membership terms offered to the eighth football-playing school.
Yes, every $1 million counts for athletic department operating budgets under increasing pressure as the revenue-sharing era descends.
But the Pac-12’s deal, wherever it lands, will be in the same range as the conference’s primary competition for supremacy on the sport’s second tier: The American, which distributes an average of $7 million to its schools but slightly more to its anchor institutions, which include Memphis, Tulane and South Florida.
And compared to the Power Four conferences, $1 million here or there for the Pac-12 makes little difference.
“Whether they get $10 million a school or $12 million, they are so far behind the (power) leagues that it’s all on the margins,” an industry source said.
Put another way: Even the high end of the projected revenue range won’t provide Pac-12 schools with the resources needed to compete with the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten or SEC; nor will it create a material advantage over the American.
But when it comes to exposure, the array of outcomes for the rebuilt Pac-12 could have a massive impact on the trajectory of the conference relative to its competition.
Without a premium package of football and basketball games on linear television, strategic positioning for the next era will become immensely more challenging.
“We’re all waiting for college football 2.0 to come about,” Thompson said. “Staying relevant is extremely important if you want a shot at being part of what might happen in 2030.”
How is relevance defined at the negotiating table?
Many college sports media deals are split into packages, with the best football matchups typically constituting the so-called ‘A’ package. The Pac-12 is seeking multiple partners to provide the most comprehensive deal for its member schools and their fans.
That could mean the ‘A’ package goes to The CW, with perhaps Warner Bros. Discovery (Turner) taking the ‘B’ package and ESPN the ‘C’ package.
Or perhaps Fox and CBS are involved, since their contracts with the Mountain West expire when the Pac-12’s new deal is supposed to start (the summer of 2026).
There are streaming options, as well, with ESPN+ and Max, a subsidiary of Warner.
And both ESPN and Fox have announced plans for direct-to-consumer platforms later this year. (ESPN’s new streaming service will be distinct from ESPN+.)
The Pac-12 and Octagon must sort through the options and offers, all with the goal of providing its football teams with maximum visibility over the remainder of the decade.
Without visibility, relevance will wane.
Without visibility, access to the College Football Playoff will turn treacherous.
Without visibility, the desperate quest for invitations to “college football 2.0” will become exponentially more difficult.
The Pac-12 is expected to finalize its media rights agreement in the coming weeks, perhaps by the end of April, certainly by the middle of May.
Instinctively, fans will focus on the dollars involved. But for the schools, which are consumed with positioning themselves for the 2030s, all eyes should be on the linear television exposure.
Are any time slots free of competition from the Power Four?
Are the majority of games on Saturday?
How many games per week are available on over-the-air and cable networks?
It’s a five-year audition. You trade the dollars for the eyeballs.
“Hiding behind a streaming paywall is tough,” Thompson noted, “if you’re trying to get to the point where you’re high in everybody’s mindset.”
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