Everyone in college sports is asking the same question right now: Why is the Pac-12 so obviously confident in its not-yet-finished media rights deal? San Diego State isn’t coming in 2024, which means SMU isn’t coming, either. The Pac-12 supposedly needed the football inventory from those schools to get a competitive price point in a media rights package.
Also, the media deal will not be done in time for Pac-12 media day on Friday, July 21, or at least, that is what has circulated among Pac-12 insiders plus ESPN. George Kliavkoff will not have a deal to announce to the world. That was supposedly a very big thing.
Expansion is on hold. The rights deal has continuously been pushed back and back and back. The Pac-12 should be in misery, frantic and desperate to make something happen. Yet, like the Stepford wives or like people in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” after they have been replaced by the alien pods, Pac-12 executives and administrators are eerily relaxed and calm.
“I’m fine. No worries. Everything’s great. We have no pressure.” It does feel like science fiction in many ways. What’s going on? What are we missing?
There is obviously some underlying reason Pac-12 sources are so confident despite a situation that outwardly seems far less than optimal.
We might finally have our reason, though it’s not anything formally confirmed or official.
Andrew Marchand of the New York Post, who hosts a widely-respected and prominent sports media podcast with John Ourand of Sports Business Journal, had Bank of America’s Jessica Reif Ehrlich on his most recent podcast episode. Reif Ehrlich said that Disney CEO Bob Iger’s recent comments could potentially point to a situation in which ESPN and Comcast join forces:
CLIP: Bank of America's Jessica Reif Ehrlich says Bob Iger's comments screams for an ESPN deal with Comcast.
POD: https://t.co/RJhdFHXJCi pic.twitter.com/9nCuqwAwTz
— Andrew Marchand (@AndrewMarchand) July 19, 2023
Chris Novak of Awful Announcing picked up on this story and wrote the following:
“But how would Comcast and Disney/ESPN want to find some type of deal here? It doesn’t really make sense. … That is, unless you consider the two companies are already at the table negotiating Disney’s planned buyout of Comcast’s stake in Hulu.
“In May, CNBC reported that Comcast was primed to sell its stake in the streaming service to Disney at the beginning of 2024. This alone is going to be a transaction in the billions as Comcast holds a 1/3 stake in Hulu, which is valued somewhere near $30 billion. Whenever a valuation on Comcast’s stake is agreed upon, it’s not hard to envision a scenario where Comcast opts to take some of that payment in equity in ESPN versus cash, which Disney would likely welcome. Disney, Inc currently owns 80 percent of ESPN, while 20 percent goes to Hearst for reference. Could Comcast take some of their Hulu cashout and maybe throw some more cash to take a Hearst-like stake in ESPN and leave ESPN as the majority holder?”
When you realize that the Pac-12 has a mess with Comcast it has needed to clean up, and when you realize that the Pac-12 needs both linear and digital components to a media rights package, the idea of linking up with ESPN after ESPN unites with an equity partner in a stronger, more fortified company with tentacles reaching into every avenue of the sports broadcasting industry comes across as the kind of scenario which could save the Pac-12. The price point, the menu of offerings, the overall visibility for games, everything you could think of, would all fall into place.
We’re not saying this deal is done, but we are saying George Kliavkoff has been studying this and thinks some endgame with ESPN and an equity partner — whether Comcast or Apple or Amazon or Google — is inevitable and likely to happen in the next four to six weeks.
This would indeed explain why the Pac-12 is confident when outward events would seem to offer no reason for such extreme comfort and calm.
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