The Pac-12 will not be announcing a new media rights deal during its annual football media day.
A source with knowledge of the matter, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the conference’s ongoing negotiations, confirmed the league will not be announcing anything on Friday related to its impending media deal.
However, the source said the conference is still on track to secure a deal in the near future.
“All the folks we’ve been talking to have gone through nine months of really, really tough times,” the source said, referring to the conference’s potential broadcast partners. “The board (of Pac-12 presidents and chancellors) has been incredibly patient. We’re going to get better deals now than we would have gotten three, six, nine months ago.”
The conference has maintained a similar stance since UCLA and USC announced they were leaving for the Big Ten in August 2024, prompting the Pac-12 to begin negotiating its new media rights deal more than a year ago.
Since then, the Big 12 expanded and secured a new media deal that locked up multiple television windows on Fox and ESPN.
The Pac-12′s current grant of rights expires Aug. 2, 2024 and the conference’s plan remains to finalize a media deal, that in turn will lead to a new grant of rights, then address the possibility of expansion.
Yahoo first reported the Pac-12 would not be announcing its media rights deal this week. The drawn out nature of the league’s negotiations has created instability across college football, with San Diego State and the Mountain West having a contentious back-and-forth over its status with that conference, which announced SDSU will remain a member in good standing for 2023-24 and receive its full share of revenue distribution.
SDSU and SMU remain the leading two candidates to join the Pac-12, should the conference expand.
But first comes the media deal and with the 2023 season kicking off in 38 days the time remaining to finalize a deal before a possible defection from one of the existing members is narrowing.
“We’re coming up on it; it’s got to get done,” the source said. “It’s time to do a deal.”
— James Crepea reported from Las Vegas