[Giants]

When you have a product, there is nothing more important than distribution. The Pac has failed miserably on this vector.

I have had DirecTV and never been able to get Pac-12 Network because DTV doesn't carry it. To carry it, DTV would need to pay Pac-12 Network a fee. DTV would pass this price on to subscribers who paid for the level of service the Pac-12 Network was on. The Big Ten Network was on the basic DTV package. Why? Because Fox told DTV if you don't carry Big Ten, you can't carry our other channels your customers want. ESPN as partner would say carrier can't carry ESPN unless they carry P12. This is what they did with SEC Net. Without a media partner, the Pac-12 had no such leverage with DTV. If the Big Ten went alone as the Pac-12 did, it too might have been shutout of DTV.

The Tier 1 rights are another matter. They are bought by broadcasters like ESPN, FOX, CBS, NBC who already have carriage deals with the cable and satellite companies and are seeking content to justify their price to the carriers and sell advertising. 

The big problem Scott had was he couldn't or wouldn't get a deal that allowed the Pac-12 Network to be streamed without a cable or satellite subscription. The carriers would say "why would we pay you to carry the P12 Net, something we carry to get subscribers, if someone can go to Pac.12.org to watch it?" My solution would have been to tell DTV we'll give you a portion of each subscription we get if put on the basic package. Like, "charge $.50 per month or P12 Net per DTV subscriber and we'll give you $.50/mo for each subscriber to P12 Net online. DTV had about 20M subs in 2017, so this would have equated to about $120M ($6 x 20M) for Pac-12. This would have meant all others wanting Pac-12 Net content not on DTV would have to go online to buy a premium streaming license if not with DTV. Let's say another 5 million people did this, and Pac-12 Net was priced at $99/year. The P12 would have given DTV $30M as partner. Why wouldn't DTV do this? And it would have setup the model to sell P12 Net direct to customer without cable carrier subscription. You could get P12 off your ISP connection. It's just brain dead stupid to set yourself up so you can't collect $99 from a large market, in order to preserve a carrier that pays you maybe $12/year from a much smaller market.

As they evolved the Pac-12 could have had a TV app, become less reliant on DTV for distribution, and I dare say the Pac-12 would have generated more leverage over DTV as DTV lost customers to cord cutting. The Pac-12 should have partnered with DirecTV on Pac-12 Network, not just operated as if it was selling a product to it. 

As for today, the Pac-12 network still doesn't have a TV app (like HBO Max, Disney+) to sell its network through Internet-enabled TVs, to at minimum create some leverage for itself in negotiations and create another distribution channel.

If it develops its own distribution, it could then evolve its product and massively differentiate itself from competition. Instead, it has kept itself playing in a tiny box with rules of media companies that don't care about it at all, and are just looking to get cheap content. Again, if you can't win the game you are playing, change the game!

This whole disaster would make for a great business school case study for how to fail in the sports business that is pretty freaking difficult to fail in.

Not worth a business case study.  

Like so many business failures in the past (that have been analyzed) it boils down to the lack of leadership.  In this case, the chancellors/presidents failed miserably.  They had a number of chances to get it right and took the wrong turn at every juncture.

[Giants]

When you have a product, there is nothing more important than distribution. The Pac has failed miserably on this vector.

I have had DirecTV and never been able to get Pac-12 Network because DTV doesn't carry it. To carry it, DTV would need to pay Pac-12 Network a fee. DTV would pass this price on to subscribers who paid for the level of service the Pac-12 Network was on. The Big Ten Network was on the basic DTV package. Why? Because Fox told DTV if you don't carry Big Ten, you can't carry our other channels your customers want. ESPN as partner would say carrier can't carry ESPN unless they carry P12. This is what they did with SEC Net. Without a media partner, the Pac-12 had no such leverage with DTV. If the Big Ten went alone as the Pac-12 did, it too might have been shutout of DTV.

The Tier 1 rights are another matter. They are bought by broadcasters like ESPN, FOX, CBS, NBC who already have carriage deals with the cable and satellite companies and are seeking content to justify their price to the carriers and sell advertising. 

The big problem Scott had was he couldn't or wouldn't get a deal that allowed the Pac-12 Network to be streamed without a cable or satellite subscription. The carriers would say "why would we pay you to carry the P12 Net, something we carry to get subscribers, if someone can go to Pac.12.org to watch it?" My solution would have been to tell DTV we'll give you a portion of each subscription we get if put on the basic package. Like, "charge $.50 per month or P12 Net per DTV subscriber and we'll give you $.50/mo for each subscriber to P12 Net online. DTV had about 20M subs in 2017, so this would have equated to about $120M ($6 x 20M) for Pac-12. This would have meant all others wanting Pac-12 Net content not on DTV would have to go online to buy a premium streaming license if not with DTV. Let's say another 5 million people did this, and Pac-12 Net was priced at $99/year. The P12 would have given DTV $30M as partner. Why wouldn't DTV do this? And it would have setup the model to sell P12 Net direct to customer without cable carrier subscription. You could get P12 off your ISP connection. It's just brain dead stupid to set yourself up so you can't collect $99 from a large market, in order to preserve a carrier that pays you maybe $12/year from a much smaller market.

As they evolved the Pac-12 could have had a TV app, become less reliant on DTV for distribution, and I dare say the Pac-12 would have generated more leverage over DTV as DTV lost customers to cord cutting. The Pac-12 should have partnered with DirecTV on Pac-12 Network, not just operated as if it was selling a product to it. 

As for today, the Pac-12 network still doesn't have a TV app (like HBO Max, Disney+) to sell its network through Internet-enabled TVs, to at minimum create some leverage for itself in negotiations and create another distribution channel.

If it develops its own distribution, it could then evolve its product and massively differentiate itself from competition. Instead, it has kept itself playing in a tiny box with rules of media companies that don't care about it at all, and are just looking to get cheap content. Again, if you can't win the game you are playing, change the game!

This whole disaster would make for a great business school case study for how to fail in the sports business that is pretty freaking difficult to fail in.

Not worth a business case study.  

Like so many business failures in the past (that have been analyzed) it boils down to the lack of leadership.  In this case, the chancellors/presidents failed miserably.  They had a number of chances to get it right and took the wrong turn at every juncture.