The Pac-12 Conference still hasn’t reached agreement on a media rights deal with ESPN, Amazon, Apple, or other prospective TV and streaming partners. While we wonder if San Diego State’s ride to the Final Four has changed the equation to any meaningful extent, we can still say a few things with relative confidence about the path George Kliavkoff needs to follow.
One core component of a wise, prudent, forward-thinking media rights strategy would seem to be to pitch football games and other media products in less traditional formats or slots. The conference has to be willing to stand out from the crowd and give Amazon and Apple (also ESPN, but especially the streaming services) standalone events which won’t get buried by other conferences on mainstream television or cable networks. Creating products college football and college sports fans will be drawn to — when other conferences or time zones don’t have live action — reinforces the reality that the Pac-12 has something other conferences lack. That is precisely the thing Kliavkoff needs to capitalize on in order to arrive at a reasonably competitive price point which stabilizes the conference and gives it a chance to be competitive several years from now, when the realignment map is likely to change due to various “grant of rights” exit fees significantly declining for schools such as Florida State and Clemson, which might be inclined to leave the ACC for the SEC.
We talked to Mark Rogers at The Voice of College Football about this larger idea:
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