What Will The Regents Know With Any Certainty?

In prior blog posts, we have noted that the Regents will have a special meeting on August 17th to discuss UCLA's move to the Big Ten. A report will be presented.* So far, that report is not available on the Regents webpage for that meeting. Whether it will be posted in advance of the meeting is unknown.

The assumption is that more money for UCLA from the move means less money for Berkeley. But how much? Exactly what the money element will be in magnitude is a matter for current speculation in the sports business press. There is speculation in particular about ESPN and its business strategy. (Will the Regents push for revenue sharing with Berkeley if they don't know how much revenue there will be to be shared?) On current news media speculation, see:

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/SB-Blogs/Newsletter-Media/2022/08/08.aspx

and

https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/08/09/the-big-tens-media-deal-espns-exclusion-the-competition-factor-and-what-it-all-means-for-pac-12-survival/.

The point is that the UCLA and USC move has put the money side of the deal in flux and reshuffled bidding for broadcast rights. Of course, there are other aspects of the move to the Big Ten including the direct impact on the student-athletes due to travel requirements. And there are the technical issues of circumventing bans on use of state money for travel to certain states. Note that if the governor (again) shows up at the Regents to discuss the move, he may not want to push the travel ban issue given his recent vacationing in (banned) Montana which kicked up a fuss.**

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*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-regents-are-coming-to-talk-about.html and http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2022/07/date-confusion-priorities.html.

**https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/06/newsom-california-vacation-montana-00044363.

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We'll continue our chat on this matter with BlenderBot 3 as we did yesterday to see what artificial intelligence has to say: