I’m not sure the Pac-12 can afford to get harder to find. They can potentially afford quite a bit if they sign a deal with Apple or Amazon as conference commissioners George Kliavkoff is eyeing a sizeable TV rights deal to provide its sporting directors with a reassuring cushion of cash to lay their worried heads on. Optics and especially eyes are everything.
Amazon and Apple Everyone knows how hard it is to break the audience’s muscle memory, turn on the TV and head to the entrance or the app for Netflix, HBO, or the cable box. Why do you think Teddy Lasso has been overallincluding in Pints of Jeni’s Ice Cream and at the White House?
While I’m sure Apple would introduce an ad boost reminiscent of what Amazon did with it NFL’s Thursday Night Football, the Shield, is a different beast, and Amazon still had to compensate some advertisers for it TNF does not agree with projections.
Which brings us to ESPN, the third company trying to woo the Pac-12. Or is the Pac-12 the seducer? I have no idea. Anyway off what i read — and that follows with that Layoffs are said to be pending at Disney/ESPN – The only way the Pac-12 will end up on the mothership is by accepting a low-ball offer, which will get the conference a few games on the main feed but plenty of ESPN+ action.
It’s hard enough getting a Pac-12 audience after dark
I’m definitely not the type to bitch about games starting or ending late. Some industries require employees to be on the phone at 6 or 7 a.m., and sportswriters should, at least in theory, consider staying up past their bedtime part of their job.
That doesn’t apply to fans or the audience. They’ll see when and where it suits, and if it’s on Apple or Amazon at 9pm on Saturday night after watching football all day, good damn luck. Tires after 10pm during the week? Don’t even look at the reviews.
Take away USC soccer and UCLA basketball in a year or two, and greater viewing in metropolitan Los Angeles is gone. The Big 12 might have been able to convince Fox and ESPN that their product was worth $2.3 billion, but that was before Bob Iger returned to Disney and before we heard of streaming spending spiraling out of control of the company.
That’s Apple or Amazon. Everyone has live sports, but the return didn’t matter. Be it MLB at Apple or the NFL at Amazon, streaming services have yet to find a foolproof plan to do so transfer games. This isn’t CBS, NBC, or TNT where you hook up the games on one channel and watch viewers tune in.
I understand the bet on fans who focus on services for sport; it just feels like an extremely risky proposition given the current indifference to conferences that aren’t called the SEC or the Big Ten.
What is the Pac-12 worth?
The Pac-12 hasn’t won a national championship in soccer or men’s basketball since 2004, and that has been USC. The Big 12 had a team in the finals of the College Football Playoffs in January and boast the last two winners of the Men’s March Madness. They can pull off at least a few notable feats, while the Pac-12 can only tell you how good Utah is.
Oregon will soon be the biggest remaining brand at the conference, and they were Rumored to be the Big Ten. We’ve also heard similar rumors about the “Four Corners” schools – Colorado, Utah, Arizona and Arizona State interest of the Big 12. Let’s be honest, they all make doomsday scenarios and talk about granting rights my cerebral hemorrhage.
I personally couldn’t it doesn’t give a damn which conference has been doing what and how lately, but that’s not the point Reality. The reality is, if the Pac-12 screws up, which is a possibility even with a new TV deal, college sports fans will be on their way to a two-conference hierarchy with a bunch of orphaned colleges vying for scrap.
Then there’s only one way to stop the Big Ten and SEC’s lust for power, but America doesn’t seem as keen on breaking up monopolies as it is.
