Money Honey

If there was any doubt that money, and more money, is the key to the Big Ten/UCLA deal, the Las Vegas Sun provides the evidence:

The Big Ten Conference's, seven-year deal with Fox, CBS and NBC has not only set the benchmark for college sports rights, it has established the latest ground rules for realignment. With the additions of Southern California and UCLA in 2024, the conference will have schools in the nation's top three media markets and in every time zone from coast to coast. Whether other conferences follow the Big Ten's lead will start to be known over the next couple years...

Television rights...have become the leading source of revenue for the Power Five conferences, supplanting ticket sales and donor contributions. With fewer funds available from student fees or state assistance, media rights provide some certainty due to the length of contracts. "The rule of thumb is that football drove 80-85% of the rights. It is now 85-90%,” said Jeff Nelson, the president of Navigate, a market research company... The Big Ten will be the first to receive at least $1 billion per year in its deals with Fox, NBC and CBS. If the Big Ten remains at 16 schools in 2025, each program will get at least $162.5 million from conference rights.

...The Pac-12 and Big 12 each have their deals expiring soon. The Pac-12's ends in 2024 and the conference has already started negotiating as it tries to prevent more schools from leaving... If the Big Ten added three or four Pac-12 programs, that would put the Big 12 in position to snap up most of the remaining schools. Goodbye Power Five and hello Big Four...

Full story at https://lasvegassun.com/news/2022/aug/25/college-media-rights-what-has-happened-and-whats-n/.

In short, the UC Regents are not really well positioned to stop the Big Ten/UCLA deal, but they could do more damage than good by mucking around with already-signed arrangements. Some kind of revenue sharing seems to be a better path.

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