With March Madness as the frenzied backdrop, executives from the Pac-12 and Mountain West churn forward in pursuit of media rights agreements for their restructured conferences beginning in the summer of 2026.
There’s nothing at stake except hundreds of millions of dollars, coveted exposure on major broadcast and cable networks and security for the remainder of the decade.
Talk about survive and advance.
Is there a link between victory on the court and success at the negotiating table? Do tournament wins equate to media dollars?
The new Pac-12 has three teams remaining in the NCAA field after San Diego State’s blowout loss Tuesday (to North Carolina) in the First Four. Gonzaga and Utah State play Thursday; Colorado State starts Friday.
The new Mountain West has two participants: New Mexico and Grand Canyon, which play Friday.
To what extent would another Sweet 16 appearance by Gonzaga, the biggest basketball brand in either of the rival conferences, enhance the Pac-12’s leverage? Could early exits undermine valuation? The conference is believed to have entered the final stage of negotiations, with a deal expected this spring.
The Hotline sought context from industry sources with experience in media rights agreements and granted anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the negotiations.
Their consensus opinion: Tournament wins would lift spirits but have little, if any, impact on value. “It’s on the margins,” one source suggested.
The math simply doesn’t allow otherwise.
In college sports, basketball accounts for just 20 cents of every $1 spent on media rights by the broadcast and cable networks. Football is responsible for the remainder.
Recent audience numbers help illuminate the situation.
According to ESPN, the men’s SEC tournament final last weekend (Tennessee vs. Florida) drew 3.1 million viewers, while the Big 12 version (Houston vs. Arizona) attracted 2.2 million.
Those figures represent year-over-year increases but are relative fractions of their football counterparts. The SEC championship (Georgia vs. Texas) drew 16.6 million viewers; the Big 12 game (Arizona State vs. Iowa State) generated 6.9 million eyeballs.
Even a single football season has limited impact on media valuation, industry experts said.
The negotiators hired by the conferences — the Pac-12 has retained Octagon; the Mountain West is using Endeavor — will use every data point available to better their position. But network executives take a multi-year view of the ratings generated by specific teams and leagues.
They understand success “can be cyclical,” one source explained.
Granted, Gonzaga has experienced multi-year success, and plenty of it. The Zags drive ratings and fill arenas and have reached the Sweet 16 for nine consecutive seasons, the longest such streak in the country. Twice, they have played for the national championship.
But those accomplishments and the staying power of Gonzaga’s brand is already baked into the valuation models. What happens this month won’t alter the equation enough to add significant revenue for the Zags and the rest of the rebuilt Pac-12.
The Sweet 16 means one or two more games in a single season in a sport that accounts for roughly 20 percent of the conference’s total value over a multi-year period.
There is one caveat, however.
Pac-12 commissioner Teresa Gould has adopted a blank-slate approach, with anything and everything under consideration with regard to membership, scheduling, revenue sharing and media rights.
The strategy makes sense for a conference that is effectively starting from scratch with two current members, Washington State and Oregon State, five committed members for the summer of ’26 and at least one more addition coming this year.
The same goes for the Mountain West, which will have a slew of new members in 2026.
If either entity attempts to sell its football and basketball rights as separate packages — that’s not a strategy typically deployed by college conferences — then success in the NCAAs this month could be material.
Otherwise, on-court performance is more about vibe than value. Vibe isn’t meaningless, but attaching a dollar figure is difficult when the network negotiators staring back from across the table have spent months running models based on years of data.
ESPN, Fox, CBS, The CW, Warner Bros. Discovery — none of the potential rights buyers will tear up their bids and return with better offers because Gonzaga reached the Sweet 16 or Grand Canyon unleashed another first-round upset.
Could an extreme situation change the dynamics? What if Gonzaga advances to the national championship?
According to the industry experts, any difference between what the Pac-12 currently stands to receive for the totality of its media rights and what it would receive if the Zags cut down the nets in San Antonio would be incremental, not exponential.
Basketball simply doesn’t occupy enough space in the valuation game to change the math.
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