How the Pac-12 Enterprises rose from the ashes and helped convince Boise State, San Diego State to join the conference

The rebirth of the Pac-12 began with the death of its football scheduling partnership with the Mountain West. At least, that’s how Boise State athletic director Jeramiah Dickey described the sequence that propelled the Broncos and four other Mountain West schools into the Pac-12 beginning in the summer of 2026.

When negotiations dissolved over an extension of the partnership, the realignment “conversation really started to escalate,” Dickey explained during a September news conference.

But escalation is not the same as culmination. The Broncos needed to know more. So did the other schools initially targeted by the Pac-12: San Diego State, Fresno State and Colorado State.

What could be expected from a media deal? How would College Football Playoff revenue be distributed? How would the Pac-12’s considerable financial assets be deployed?

Pac-12 commissioner Teresa Gould and her media consultants provided the answers — and went one step beyond. They pitched the four schools on the hidden potential of the Pac-12 Enterprises, the technological infrastructure and production unit that supported the now-defunct Pac-12 Networks.

Boise State officials liked what they heard.

“I’m bullish,” Dickey said. “I see a lot of value in that. We’re big on telling our story and streaming and what’s coming. I feel like (Pac-12 Enterprises) gives us the opportunity to be on the front end of creating something that could be epic.”

The Pac-12 Networks went dark as a media distribution company this summer with the departure of 10 schools to other conferences, but the cutting-edge technology and visionary engineers remained in place.

In fact, Pac-12 Enterprises, which is based in the Bay Area city of San Ramon, was already under contract to produce Washington State and Oregon State football games for The CW this season.

As Gould and her consultants explained, the production unit could do the same for the Mountain West schools if they joined the conference. Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State and San Diego State would have the ability to produce high-quality events at low cost.

Hundreds of events.

From any venue on campus — or off.

“Something that kind of gets lost with people (is) the Pac-12 Enterprises,” San Diego State athletic director JD Wicker said during his September news conference following the Aztecs’ announced move to the Pac-12,

“(It’s) a massive asset that is sitting there that was, quite frankly, a big reason why we considered this.”

It’s a Shakespearian twist in the evolving story of the Pac-12. As a business, the Pac-12 Networks failed to meet expectations. They provided limited revenue to the campuses and struggled to gain distribution — a massive strategic miscalculation that contributed to the Pac-12’s collapse.

But from a production standpoint, the Pac-12 Networks were a roaring success. And within the ash heap of the storied conference, the guts of the operation (the technology and engineers, the producers and directors) is alive and well.

The Pac-12 Enterprises can produce content for the schools and whichever linear or streaming companies partner with the Pac-12 on its next media rights deal.

And they can produce events for media entities unaffiliated with the conference.

In other words: An external revenue stream.

“Having that setup in San Ramon should be a good advantage for the conference going forward,” retired Fox Sports president Bob Thompson said.

Since the launch of the Pac-12 Networks in the summer of 2012, the infrastructure has produced more than 10,000 live events from more than 100 different venues. The key to the operation is a technology that allows essential production to take place at the Pac-12 Enterprises, not on-site at the event.

There’s no need for massive, costly production trucks. Instead, the Pac-12 rents small trucks for football and basketball games. For small-scale Olympic sports events, the on-site technology consists of so-called “air packs,” which are the size of large luggage rollerbags.

They can be positioned at any venue and connected to a few cameras (hand-held or mounted). The video is uploaded to Sam Ramon, where the engineers, producers and directors are based. The latency is approximately 0.2 seconds.

There are benefits for non-event production, as well.

The 10 schools that departed for the ACC, Big Ten and Big 12 were required to build on-campus studios to provide content for their media partners. The price-tag is believed to run into the seven figures.

That’s not the case for Washington State, Oregon State and the Pac-12’s incoming schools, which have limited equipment on campus and transmit the content back to San Ramon.

“The centralized model is superior to having individual production on campuses — that isn’t financially efficient,” said Michael Molinari, senior vice president for Pac-12 Enterprises. “We have one building versus 12 or 16″ for other conferences.

The ability to produce high-quality content on campus was attractive to Boise State and San Diego State.

So, too, was the potential for Pac-12 Enterprises to thrive in the new, streaming-based media world.

“The trend is that most streamers produce little of the content themselves,” Molinari said. “We can supply future partners with a finished product.”

Apple’s broadcasts of Major League Soccer are produced by the MLS itself.

Amazon partnered with NBC to produce ‘Thursday Night Football.’

And the Pac-12 Enterprises is handling The CW’s broadcasts of Washington State and Oregon State home football games, plus the pre- and post-game shows.

“The games have looked great (on The CW),” Thompson said. “Going forward, there could be a lot of events on streamers. If you look how Pac-12 Enterprises operates, they could provide that production service for the conference and the conference’s partner.”

Or for third parties.

Before the conference expanded, Pac-12 Enterprises agreed to produce a Colorado State football game.

It has also produced studio shows for the ACC Network, a Golden State Warriors exhibition game for NBC Bay Area and a West Coast Conference preseason basketball media event.

Upcoming commitments include dozens of Cal sporting events (for the ACC’s media platforms), Oregon State wrestling for FloSports and operational work for Arizona’s athletic department.

There is no limit, literally.

“Pac-12 Enterprises can be used by any streamer for any event in the country,” Molinari said.

For the moment, the profits are modest: approximately 20-to-25 percent of the cost of pro events and 15 percent of the cost for college competitions. (Or as an industry source estimated: up to $10,000 for most events.)

That’s not even a blip on the budgets in Boise and San Diego. But as streaming expands its territory in the media ecosystem, Pac-12 Enterprises could generate significant profit — in addition to what it provides the schools and their media partners.

“You look at the Pac-12 and the things they were well ahead of the curve on, and those things still hold true today,” Dickey said.

“I don’t think they were off-base at all. Hence, the investment they had in Pac-12 Enterprises. They were right on, and fortunately, we get to be a part of that.”

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