(01-25-2023 09:31 AM)Eichorst Wrote: (01-25-2023 06:15 AM)BruceMcF Wrote: (01-25-2023 05:57 AM)GTFletch Wrote: Tim Montemayor: TV industry sources: Oregon is among several PAC 12 school hesitating to sign a grant of rights for a deal with Amazon. The issues surround a belief that fans & CFB decision makers will not go to Amazon specifically to watch PAC 12 games, which Oregon and others say damages them.
Link
https://twitter.com/TheMontyShow/status/...7806219264
Occam's Razor: the simplest explanation is that they don't have a deal because the schools don't agree on some important aspect of the deal.
But if the money were good, I don't think there'd be much heartburn about Amazon as a streaming partner (and the NFL ratings on Amazon have exceeded expectations, for what it's worth).
There's a huge difference between Amazon being *a* TV partner (e.g. splitting the rights between ESPN and Amazon) and Amazon being *the* TV partner (where there isn't a separate deal with ESPN or another linear TV provider).
Amazon offered more money to the Big Ten than either CBS or NBC for the Saturday Night Football package, but the Big Ten ultimately decided that the OTA platform was more important (or at least Amazon wasn't offering enough of a premium compared to the OTA networks to move such valuable games to streaming exclusive). The Big Ten also then turned around and sent some football games (honestly not a big deal) and a lot of basketball games (honestly a much bigger deal for the average Big Ten fan that is often getting glossed over in the hyper-focus on football) to Peacock, which is an objectively worse streaming platform than Amazon... but that was the trade-off for getting so much revenue and OTA coverage for the league's marquee football games. The point is that the Big Ten was fine with *some* streaming, but it wasn't going to give up OTA exposure even though they would have gotten more money from an Amazon deal.
The Pac-12 doesn't have the same type of leverage as the Big Ten, but the school presidents and ADs are certainly going to be cognizant of the exposure issue. It's easy for us to just sit and say, "Take the money!" However, if the main issue that the Pac-12 has had all along about maximizing its value is that it hasn't been able to garner the same broad-based national audiences compared to the Big Ten and SEC, then going to 100% streaming is going to exacerbate that even worse. Even for lower tier games, remember that the Pac-12 has suffered the last decade with the Pac-12 Networks being in the wilderness and getting so little carriage compared to the BTN and SECN.
Sure - if Amazon is throwing out a number that's 2 or 3 times as much as ESPN, then it's hard to turn that down. I doubt that is what's happening, though. If Amazon is offering something more along the lines of a 10-20% premium over the linear networks (which I think is probably closer to what's happening), then that's not exactly a no-brainer for anyone in the Pac-12.
I've said all along that I would be absolutely flabbergasted if the Pac-12 sold ALL of its rights to Amazon or another streaming provider. 50/50 between ESPN and Amazon is certainly very possible (and that's what I'd predict), but I can't see how any university president signs off on going 100% to Amazon unless the economics are so mind-bogglingly more (200-300% more, not just 10-20% more) that you can't turn it down.