The pertinent news of the day is the Oregon Ducks and Washington Huskies are leaving the Pac-12 Conference after 108 years and joining the Big Ten Conference.
With the moves, the Big Ten has 18 members going into the 2024 season after adding Oregon, Washington, USC and UCLA during the past year.
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One of the driving reasons Oregon wanted to leave the Pac-12 for greener pastures was revenue. At the end of this season, the Pac-12’s media rights deal ends, and the conference has not yet agreed to a new deal. Uncertainty over what media partners the conference could get and how much money each school could expect showed few signs of resolution.
This uncertainty led to the departure of the Colorado Buffaloes a week ago, which sparked Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah all jumping ship for greener grass.
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One of the stipulations for the Big Ten adding both Oregon and Washington is the two teams will come into the conference with a minimized share of the TV revenue distribution. While the conference signed a record $8 billion deal last year with Fox, NBC and CBS, the Ducks and Huskies will not receive an even cut.
More information on how big those shares will be to start is slowly surfacing.
For comparison, Big Ten full share distributions averaged out to $58.8M in 2021-22, before the conference's new TV deal has even started.
This is considered a major financial win for the conference, whose full-share members could project to upward of $70M by 2029-30. https://t.co/iSRnjqz66R
— Matt Fortuna (@Matt_Fortuna) August 4, 2023
That feels like quite the bargain for the Big Ten.
While Oregon and Washington will eventually get revenue shares that match the $60-70 million range in the future, the Big Ten is getting them on a discount for the next several years.
If that’s the price of stability and a seat at the table for the foreseeable future, then so be it.
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