Every? 8 of them will have no place to go, and at the very least they’ll stick around to collect NCAA credits and CFP money. They’ll also collect negotiated exit fees as the barn doors start opening around 2033 or 2034 when The lesser schools will be incentivized to start cutting deals.
This was the argument we heard when we were in the AAC with espn. Where to next? Its a silly argument if you ask me. Since the dismantling of the Big East football conference we focused our limited resources elsewhere and let football flounder that is the primary reason of why we are where we are. They tried to half step it with football. While Houston, Cincinnati, and UCF went with big time FB hires we went cheap and screwed ourselves over.
This what i have been saying. Forces from within wanted the PAC to fall apart for their own benefit. Those 2 were never going to go to the Big12 but wanted the Big12 to decimate the PAC.
Maybe, but they are only two votes. For what it's worth, they aren't getting $70 million. They agreed to a half share. That was the point of contention. Supposedly the Big Ten only offered them after Colorado had joined and once Arizona indicated it was interested.
Yeah, but in the end, they were the ones who "decimated" the Pac 12.
It was their desired outcome, with the B1G being on record as not wanting to be the ones to destroy the PAC with its 100 year history. It was lunacy to turn down 30 million a year per school after losing USC and UCLA. Contrast that with hiw the Big12 played it after losing Texas and OU. I have no doubt OU and UW led the charge in saying no to the 30 million dollar offer. Sad that they had no issue screwing over the sister schools in their own state.
Don't underestimate FOX. They are licking their chops to grab some key media properties from ESPN.
Big should grab unc and Virginia. Fsu and Clemson? No. Those are sec teams.
Money is not an issue for Apple. They have $28B in cash and a $3T market cap. Like any good investor, they evaluated the value of the PAC and determined that the assets weren’t worth a penny more than their offer. No reason to up the ante. I’m still confident that they’ll find a way to get involved in college athletics. In fact, I know a school with an undervalued athletic department who could really use Apple’s platform and market savvy to gain exposure for their football program. It would only cost Apple a fraction of what they offered for the defunct PAC.
UConn should definitely looking into partnering with Apple for football. Big East should look into this as well along with NBC. Both UConn and the Big East need to partner with other media partners other than ESPN and Fox.
I think that in the next two years, Apple will most likely buy either paramount or espn/Disney. They will enter that way and strike more when the time is right for them.
If the Big East partners w Apple, my guess is that the Big 12 would offer UConn almost immediately.
Are their exit fees when the agreement ends?
This is true. But unless the money and visibility is there, UConn can’t force that issue.
Apple actually has $167 billion of cash and marketable securities. Net cash (cash minus debt) is $61 billion. Disney's market cap is $163 billion. If the tech giants want to go aggressively after sports, companies like ESPN are in trouble.
Ideally, UConn should get both Amazon Prime and Apple. Perhaps split 3 games on Prime and 3 on Apple to maximize revenue. If not, go with Amazon since there is a huge prime membership base. People subscribe to prime for other benefits, and streaming is just one of the benefits.
They can certainly build that into contract. Basically, they can put on a clause that contract is up for renegotiation if UConn leave. AAC had a clause like this in their media contract.
This is for sure. All the latest realignment moves were all manipulated by the media companies. It is sickening but it is what it is.
My hope is tech companies step in and really shake up colleges sports. They have the platforms and the money to do so.
Or buy green bananas?.......and you no longer make "long-range" plans.
Disney isn‘t the answer. They don’t need all that branded material, theme parks etc. Apple just needs a little more production capacity and some more inventory. They are taking this slowly because the weak are still being shaken out by the shift. Small pouches like AMC Networks would make sense.
