I just dont know why peoeple would value the MW more than they do right now. the 3.5 number. Have a hard time seeing the MW get more than 5. What are the media networks paying for? San Jose v. Wyoming?
There are three primary reasons:
1. Inflation. The current deal started in 2020. Prices are 23.3% higher than before the covid recession began in February 2020, with the current annual inflation rate at 2.8%.
2. No more sweet heart deals. Take Boise’s inflated deal and we pass the savings onto the rest of the conference.
3. Hawaii. This is a bit bigger than people think. We get almost no returned value since Spectrum owned their rights. Hawaii and the other Pacific Islands add another 2m-3m viewership base to go with the other islanders on the west coast that might not have been able to have easy access to Hawaii games. They are also a highly bet on game because their home games are usually the last to play.
I worked for Paramount Global. I have seen the CBSSN numbers from all of the schools going to the Pac. They aren’t nearly as great as people assume. We’re talking a factor of tens of thousands to low hundreds of thousands in separation. Numbers that were generally LOW enough that a game scheduled wouldn’t have stopped us from pushing an application update.
That being said as I have maintained, the Pac will undoubtedly end up being a better conference. But it won’t have nearly as much separation as people initially believed (some thought 18m+). Without a doubt they are the less stable than the MW.