Washington State president hints at timeline, value for new Pac-12 media rights deal
Washington State president Kirk Schulz provided some interesting insight into the Pac-12’s pending media rights deal during a university Board of Regents meeting on Friday.
According to 247Sports’ CougFan.com, Schulz hinted at the timeline and potential value within the pending media rights deal for the Pac-12. During Friday’s session, Schulz indicated he expects the new deal to be finalized “by the end of” June.
As for the potential value for a deal that will be set to begin in 2024, Schulz claimed to believe the figure of the first year of the deal will be similar to what the league generated in 2022. If that proves to be the case, the new media rights deal would likely be similar to the new deal for the Big 12 that is set to start in 2025.
“At least the projections (AD) Pat Chun and I and others have seen. I’m not sure that it will be a lot larger than we saw in the past, (and) it shouldn’t be smaller than in the past. It may be fairly flat,” said Schulz.
While growth in value is always a goal, it is not insignificant if the Pac-12 can maintain a “fairly flat” number in 2024. That is particularly noteworthy considering the league is due to lose 2 premier brands when USC and UCLA make the move to the Big Ten.
While Schulz had that to say about the media rights deal, ESPN’s Pete Thamel offered a point of clarification later in the day. According to Thamel, Washington State officials have not seen the potential numbers for the TV contract.
A clarification on the Pac-12 TV contact number projections that came out of Washington State’s board meeting today. WSU officials have still not seen the potential Pac-12 TV contract numbers. The officials were explaining to their board about why they were not projecting a…
— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) June 9, 2023