pac 12 network disaster

[FONT=&quot]Information provided to the Hotline by SNL Kagan, the renown media research firm, indicates the Pac-12 Networks have lost seven percent of their subscribers since the peak in 2016, with much of the decline attributed to the discontinuation of service on U-verse last year.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]With just 17.9 million subscribers (per Kagan), the Pac-12 Networks will have fewer subscribers in 2019 than The Pursuit Channel, The Sportsman Channel, Fox Deportes and Z Living, according to Nielsen cable coverage estimates from the fall.

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[FONT=&quot]The conference has never disclosed the financial guidance given to the campuses in 2011-12, during the run-up to the launch of the networks.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Officially, the schools were advised to avoid budgeting for a specific revenue amount and that in an extreme, worst-case scenario, the networks would still manage to break even.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]However, in a pre-launch presentation attended by athletic directors, Scott dazzled the room by providing three ranges of annual payouts (once the networks had exited the start-up phase).[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]According to a source who attended the presentation, those payout ranges were:[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]High end: $7 million-to-$10 million per school per year[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Middle: $5 million-to-$7 million per school per year[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Low end: $3 million-to-$5 million per school per year.

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[FONT=&quot]“We were just coming off the biggest Tier 1 deal in the history off college sports” — the $3 billion agreement with ESPN and Fox — “and everybody was jumping up and down. (Scott) had just walked the walk, so why shouldn’t we believe him?”[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]The presidents and chancellors were all in with Scott, to the point that his annual compensation of $4.8 million — he’s the highest-paid commissioner in collegiate athletics — is based on his dual roles as conference commissioner and media executive

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Details of the networks’ financial performance are closely guarded, with only the total income provided on the federal tax returns. (In the 2017 fiscal year, the listed income was $127,850,701.)

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2013: None listed
2014: $862,000 per school
2015 $1,677,500 per school
2016 $1,980,250 per school
2017: $2,522,167 per school
2018: $2,666,667 per school

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[FONT=&quot]The Pac-12 Networks would not exist without an inventory of content, without the games themselves.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]But in order to acquire that inventory, the conference needed each athletic department to buy back the TV rights to local football and basketball broadcasts — the games not shown nationally on ABC or ESPN — from its sponsorship and marketing partner.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Once all the local rights had been repurchased from the likes of IMG and Learfield, they were pooled together to form the content backbone of the Pac-12 Networks.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot](The SEC went through the same process a few years ago when forming its network.)[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]The amount and duration of the buy-back process varied by school and was based on individual contracts.

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[FONT=&quot]Over a four-year period, for example, UCLA had $5.6 million “carved out” of a larger sponsorship deal with IMG as compensation for the loss of its TV rights, according to a school official.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Back that figure out of the $9.7 million distributed to each campus by the Pac-12 Networks, and the Bruins have received $4.1 million in net revenue. That’s an average of $683,333 per year over six years of the networks.

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azbob said:

You also have to factor in that PAC 12 football and basketball have been terrible over the past few years including BB this year when potentially only two teams get in the the tournament and some would consider the second team, ASU, suspect.

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