Is Pac 12 being forced to expand? SMU & San Diego State favorites?
Channel: Winning Cures Everything
Date: 10/02/2023

Now, Dennis Dodd, at CBS, and Brett McMurphy, of the Action Network, both reported on potential Pac 12 expansion.  McMurphy tweeted "Pac-12 commish George Kliavkoff visiting SMU Wednesday, sources told the Action Network. San Diego State & SMU are top Pac-12 expansion candidates. Pac-12 needs more members & more inventory for new media rights deal, which is expected to rely heavily on digital streaming services."

This is something that we talked about on this show just a couple of weeks ago - San Diego State and SMU are both nearing R1 status as academic institutions, which absolutely curries them some favor with the Pac 12 presidents, but also their market sizes, as adding San Diego and Dallas will help with recruiting, television households, and more. Per John Canzano, "Adding San Diego State would get the Pac-12 back into Southern California and regain 1.13 million television households. Adding SMU would bring the Dallas TV market with it. That’s 2.96 million TV homes. SMU + San Diego State = 4.1 million combined TV households. That will be attractive to media partners. But after the dust settles, the Pac-12 would still have ~2.6 million fewer television homes than it did before the departures of USC/UCLA."

Kliavkoff visited SMU yesterday, and he, along with other Pac 12 representatives & SMU reps, were spotted at SMU basketball's 72-71 win over Temple.

Dennis Dodd's article at CBSSports.com is headlined "Pac-12 expansion with San Diego State, SMU may be necessary before league inks new media rights deal."  Now this is not exactly news.  Did the Pac 12 Presidents want to stay at 10 schools?  Probably, almost certainly.  Was it ever a realistic possibility with a new media rights deal being negotiated, and the conference being the last to market?  Not really.  There aren't a lot of big potential games, and the time slots on linear television are, for the most part, already taken up.  Without USC & UCLA, the number of "must-watch" games has dropped significantly.  Add in the reality that other lucrative properties are coming available - UFC, NASCAR, the NBA and WWE - and this is a recipe for disaster for the conference.

In Dodd's article, he states "Significantly more than half of each season's Pac-12 football games will be primarily available via streaming as part of the conference's next rights deal, sources tell CBS Sports. Such a ratio is unprecedented for a Power Five conference and for whichever streaming giant becomes the first to more fully embrace college sports. The move would likely upset Pac-12 coaches, athletic directors and administrators who rely on widespread visibility for their games via linear (cable) and network platforms for everything from athletic recruitment to university enrollment."


Basically, the Pac 12 may have been left with no other choice, and keeping a presence in Southern California, along with the biggest metro area still available - Dallas - were the 2 best options still on the table.

From Thursday 2/9/23 full show: https://youtube.com/live/blTUM3mHwn4

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