Pac-12 Media Strategy: Moving On From Directv, Passing On Espn’s Offer And Making A “different Bet”

Even all these years later — seven, to be exact — the question comes at Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott as pointedly and relentlessly as if it had been beamed down from above. Anything new with DirecTV? It’s about time we put the kibosh on that one, folks. Not only is nothing new, there won’t be anything new anytime soon, if ever. Based on comments by Scott and Pac-12 Networks president Mark Shuken, the conference no longer views a distribution deal with the satellite provider as a high priority … or any kind of priority. Scott didn’t slam the door entirely during a recent roundtable discussion, but he described the pursuit of a carriage deal with DirecTV as akin to skating where the puck “has been.” The Pac-12, he added, prefers skating “to where the puck’s going.” That was just one nugget (boulder?) from Scott and Shuken that we’ll explore in a multi-part series on Pac-12’s media strategy. That strategy strikes the Hotline as endlessly fascinating, for it combines the evolving media landscape across the Power Five with financial pressures on Pac-12 athletic departments. It combines ESPN and Fox, day games and night games, linear and digital, audience and revenue, immediate needs and long-haul goals. It combines the recent rejection of a lifeline from ESPN with the current pursuit of an equity sale and the future of the Pac-12 Networks. It combines all that and more, then crams everything into a neat package to be unwrapped by Scott and Co.