Pac-10 Lands new TV “Mega” deal

Earlier last month I blogged about the new Big-12 secondary rights media deal.  In it I argued that the deal may not be big enough to keep the Big-12 from keeping schools from leaving for other conferences for more lucrative media rights and larger revenue pools.  In the post, I noted that the Big-12 deal still put them behind the Big Ten (who is the process of renegotiating certain parts of their deal, which was the biggest until today’s Pac-12 announcement) and the Southeastern Conference in regards to media revenue deals.  The conference in last place among the big four conferences was the Pac-12, who had a smaller media deal which had many in Big-12 country laughing and scoffing at the Pac-12.

Today the Wall Street journal has announced that the Pac-10 (or Pac-12, or whatever they are called now) has reached a new TV deal.  The new deal follows closely behind that used by the Big Ten who created their own television network, and allows the Pac-12 their own network which they will have better control of.  The deal is said to be worth around $2.7 billion for 12 years with ESPN is the biggest in history for college sports.  Breaking the numbers down, it means approximately $18 million in revenue per year for each school, a significant boost in revenues for all programs in the Pac-12 conference.  The big winners might be Colorado he bolted from the Big-12 to join the Pac-12 this year, and will probably see a big gain in revenue because of this.

The Pac-12 did note that it helped that the Big Ten was the first to make their own conference, and that they learned a lot from that deal in helping to make this deal for themselves.

The Wall Street Journal article also notes that the 2014 and 2016 Olympic game media rights bidding is coming up next month, with the U.S. network preparing their bids as we speak.