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LAS VEGAS — I don't know how much Endeavor is charging the Big 12 Conference, but industry insiders expect the consulting bill will be a doozy.
Last September, Brett Yormark's conference hired WME Sports and IMG Media — two Endeavor-owned companies — to help with media strategy, advice and negotiations.
Karen Brodkin, the co-head of those two entities, said in a news release at the time: "We are proud to bring the full power of the Endeavor network to bear for the Big 12."
That "full power" has become a topic of discussion in the Pac-12 footprint as the conference continues to seek a media-rights deal and consider expansion.
The 10 remaining Pac-12 presidents and chancellors insist they're committed to sticking together. I'm told they're making good progress behind the scenes. But they're doing so amid a repetitive cascade of negative media reports, including a few that continue to crow about the imminent demise of the Pac-12.
It has me thinking a lot lately about how the media narrative is shaped. Who plants the stories? Whose agendas are being served by what we read? And how much of what is reported should we trust?
Commissioner George Kliavkoff has waved off the negative reports as orchestrated nonsense. On more than one occasion, the commissioner publicly talked about leaks and disparaging reports as "an attempt to destabilize the conference."
I reached out to Endeavor this week and requested an interview with Brodkin. Her name keeps coming up in my conversations with Pac-12 sources. I'd like to talk with her, learn more about her philosophy, and ask what she sees in the ecosystem of college athletics.
Brodkin has a solid reputation. Those who have worked closely with her say she's smart and shrewd. Apparently, the Pac-12 presidents and chancellors thought so, too. Brodkin emerged as a Pac-12 commissioner candidate after the conference decided not to renew Larry Scott's contract in early 2021.
She interviewed for the Pac-12 commissioner job, per conference sources. The Pac-12 hired Kliavkoff instead. A year later, USC and UCLA announced they were leaving for the Big Ten. It was a gut punch. One that Kliavkoff and the conference are still working to recover from.
Last summer, Endeavor offered to partner with the Pac-12. It wanted to work with Kliavkoff and his bosses on the conference's media-rights negotiations.
Endeavor Group Holdings, Inc. is headquartered in Hollywood. It owns the UFC and IMG. It has consulted in recent years with a variety of college conferences and professional sports leagues. It has worked with the NFL and recently partnered with the NCAA. It represents artists in film, music, TV, digital media, and publishing.
Ari Emmanuel is the CEO of Endeavor. He was tenacious as a Hollywood agent. In a profile written in the spring of 2021, The New Yorker described Emmanuel as "cunning, quick-thinking, charming, and heroically profane."
Ever watch the HBO show "Entourage"?
Ari Gold's character, played by Jeremy Piven, was inspired by Emmanuel. As an agent, Emmanuel had a client list that included Oprah, Dwayne Johnson, Charlize Theron and President Donald Trump, among others.
Per a source, one of the pitch people with Endeavor depicted the power of its influence by boasting "nobody gets their face on the Disney Channel without going through us."
The conference was under pressure after the defections of USC and UCLA. It announced it would go to market early with its media rights. The Pac-12 turned down Endeavor and instead hired Sports Media Advisors. That consulting firm had already presented a couple of times to the Pac-12 presidents and chancellors.
Said one board member: "We had to move quickly and we went with the group that the board already knew and trusted."
In September, the Big 12 announced that it was partnering with Endeavor. The fee structure, per those familiar with such deals, typically gives the consulting firm a percentage of the media-rights package. But the scope of the Big 12's partnership with Endeavor reaches far beyond that.
The Big 12's media rights deal with ESPN and FOX is worth $2.3 billion.
Said one industry source "it's worth millions for Endeavor."
The Pac-12 deserves some criticism. The conference presidents and chancellors stayed with Larry Scott for too long. The former commissioner spent lavishly and made some horrendous decisions that put the Pac-12 on a troubling path. And the new regime, led by Kliavkoff, should have been more tuned into the simmering bad feelings that USC and UCLA had developed.
"Keeping USC in the conference should have been job No. 1 for George," said one Pac-12 athletic director in Las Vegas this week for the men's basketball tournament.
The academics who run the Pac-12 came out of the pandemic distracted. Like every other college administrator in America, they had glaring holes in their campus budgets. I don't think anyone in the Pac-12 CEO Group expected the Trojans and Bruins would blow up a hundred years of tradition. But also, I'm not sure any of the bothered to ask.
The Pac-12 remains focused on getting a media-rights deal done in the coming weeks. The prevailing thought is that ESPN will end up with the conference's Tier 1 rights and that Apple and/or Amazon will buy the Tier 2 (Pac-12 Networks) rights. The conference has also licensed its data for sale.
Industry sources expect the Pac-12's next media-rights deal to end in 2029. A strategy designed to allow the Pac-12 to go to market again in front of the Big Ten, which signed a contract that runs through the summer of 2030.
I've been repeatedly told by conference sources that the Pac-12 expects its media-rights distribution per school to exceed — or be in close range of — the $31.6 million per year the Big 12 members will receive.
While we wait, I'd still love to talk with leadership at Endeavor.
What does it make of the health of college athletics eco-system? Can it afford to think about such things while under pressure to generate revenue? Has Endeavor played a role in the noise? If not, who? And who stands to gain from it?
One question I won't ask is why Endeavor made a foray into the world of college athletics. We all know why. It's following the money.
