Apple Close to a Deal for Pac-12 Football Streaming

Although Apple’s rumored NFL streaming ambitions may be on the back burner for a few more years, it looks like another long-term sports negotiation may finally be coming to fruition.

Apple has reportedly been exploring the idea of carrying college football for several years, possibly even before Apple TV+ was introduced. Rumors that the tech giant has been courting the Pac-12 conference go back to at least 2020, but that’s merely the first we heard of it. News of Apple’s ambitions for NFL streaming go back to at least 2016, so it’s likely that collegiate sports were on the table back then, too.

While things got relatively quiet on that front for a couple of years, likely as the focus on the media zeroed in on Apple’s bid for NFL Sunday Ticket. However, they came back to life earlier this year when a new report from the New York Post revealed that Apple was a favored pick to become the streaming platform for Pac-12.

Now that’s being confirmed by ESPN’s Pete Thamel, with news that Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff has recently presented the conference members with several options for streaming deals, with a “primarily subscription-based Apple streaming deal” as the likely leader.

If selected, the Apple streaming deal wouldn’t kick in until the current television contract expires at the end of this school year, meaning Apple would begin streaming Pac-12 games in the 2024-25 season.

Sources also indicate that such an arrangement would be a “relatively short-term contract” and start smaller, with the expectation that it would eventually grow to compete with ACC and the Big 12 conferences, the latter of which has already signed a deal with ESPN and Fox.

This has left many Pac-12 members concerned about a potential drop in viewership from a move away from traditional cable and television broadcast over to online streaming. The University of Colorado recently announced that it’s leaving the Pac-12 and returning to the Big 12, following UCLA and USC, which switched to the Big 10 conference that’s signed massive contracts with Fox, CBS, and NBC.

Current members of the Pac-12 conference include the University of Arizona, Arizona State University, UC Berkeley, the University of Oregon, Oregon State University, Stanford University, the University of Utah, the University of Washington, and Washington State University.

However, ESPN notes that Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah are being “heavily courted” by the Big 12, and it’s unclear whether the Apple TV deal will be enough to placate them. The Big 12 TV deal is expected to see conference member schools increase to an average of $31.7 million. The value of the proposed Pac-12 deal is unclear, although rumors suggest it’s lower at somewhere in the $25 million per school range. Apple was also reportedly the only streaming company willing to offer the right financial incentives.

A Pac-12 streaming deal for Apple would likely play out similarly to MLS Season Pass, where Apple committed $2.5 billion for a 10-year exclusive streaming deal. That’s around $250 million per year, although there are also incentives based on reaching certain subscriber thresholds. With nine remaining Pac-12 members, $25 million per school per year works out to a similar annual payment for Apple, although the contract may not run for the same length of time.

On the subscriber side, Apple would presumably sell a separate “all access pass” for Pac-12 games, just like it does with MLS Season Pass.

The final decision may still be a ways off. The presidents and chancellors of the conference members are said to be mulling over the deal, which also remains ambiguous because of uncertainty about how many subscribers it will be able to attract. While sources say the Pac-12 believes it will be easier to sell digital subscriptions “due to changes in the media landscape,” it may still be a hard pill to swallow as other conferences ink traditional television deals.