As if the looming departure of 10 schools and a mounting list of legal disputes weren’t problematic enough, the Pac-12 is facing a steep operational challenge.
At stake: approximately $400 million in media rights revenue.
The conference is under contract to produce approximately 120 football and men’s basketball games for ESPN and Fox and another 850 live events for the Pac-12 Networks’ distribution partners during the 2023-24 sports season.
The technology used to broadcast events is first rate, but the conference needs actual humans to handle the operations and production. And many of those humans are job hunting as the Pac-12’s final season of competition unfolds.
Internally, conference executives are crafting two plans to navigate the next nine months, according to a source with knowledge of the situation:
— A scope-of-services plan to determine which services should be continued as normal, downsized or eliminated.
— An employee retention-and-severance plan to maintain the staffing necessary to support the athletes and produce the events that generate the media cash.
(There are roughly 50 employees on the conference side and another 150 who work for the Pac-12 Networks.)
An independent, outside firm has been retained to provide advice on the retention piece, both plans require approval from the Pac-12’s board of directors.
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