Apple’s futuristic vision failed to save the Pac-12

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Last week, the only thing keeping the 108-year-old Pacific-12 Conference from its demise was Apple Inc. According to the Athletic, the technology giant proposed to pay the college conference's remaining nine member schools up to $25 million a year each to stream their games on Apple TV. It turns out that wasn't nearly enough. Last Friday, five of the member schools announced they were switching to athletic conferences with more lucrative deals, effectively killing off the self-proclaimed Conference of Champions.

The startling demise highlights the degree to which lucrative media rights have upended and realigned college sports. But more than that, Apple's failure to win over the Pac-12 is a reminder that the future of sports broadcasting is — for now — looking much less lucrative than the broadcast and cable-based setup that media and tech companies expect to be replaced by cord cutters.

A dozen years ago, the Pac-12 seemed invulnerable. It had three of the six top college football teams in the country. Better yet, the conference had just signed a football-focused $2.7 billion deal with ESPN and Fox that more than tripled its media rights income. At the time, it was the largest college sports media rights deal in history, and it set up a lucrative future. Last year, the Pac-12 distributed around $37 million for each school, the bulk of which came from media rights.

Yet as impressive as those numbers were in 2011, more recent deals eclipsed them. Last year, the Big Ten Conference agreed to a seven-year, $7.7 billion deal with Fox Corp., Paramount Global's CBS, and Comcast Corp.'s NBC, that will initially pay around $60 million for each school; at the end of the deal, distributions will be around $100 million. Notably, the