Pac-12 Network Likely to Shut Down in June; Layoffs Begin in January

It’s a cold twist of irony that the Pac-12 had one of its most entertaining football seasons in recent memory during the fall of 2023, and it almost certainly will be its last. The conference is all but dead, as 10 of its 12 schools are set to depart for other conferences in 2024. A new report from MSN indicates that the conference’s dedicated cable channel bundle the Pac-12 Network will begin the process of shutting down operations early next year.

• Pac-12 Network will begin laying off employees in January, in a process that’s expected to last until June.
• First launched in 2012, the Pac-12 Network never achieved expectations set by conference executives.
• The Pac-12’s failure to secure a new media deal this year was a huge factor in the ultimate demise of the conference.

When Will Pac-12 Network Go Off the Air?

There’s been no official announcement of a date for when the channel will leave the airwaves, but MSN reports that the conference will lay off 141 employees of Pac-12 Network in several rounds. Those layoffs will begin on Jan. 5 and will continue through June 28, according to documents filed with labor officials. While the channel will continue to broadcast games throughout the rest of the academic year, with the end of the football season, many employees will be let go.

The Pac-12 Network will continue to broadcast games, matches, and events for the rest of the conference’s sports, including men’s and women’s basketball, but because it is only available on cable providers in the league’s footprint (and only on two live TV streaming services), it never saw the impact that the Big Ten Network, SEC Network, or even ACC Network did. The difference between those three successes and the Pac-12 Network is that the West Coast conference decided to establish the channel on its own and not partner with an established broadcaster. Conversely, the Big Ten worked with Fox and the SEC and ACC partnered with ESPN.

The established distribution avenues that those major media entities already had established allowed the new conference-specific networks to reach far more homes than the independently distributed Pac-12 Network. For a time, the channel was able to achieve its goals of providing greater exposure for its schools and bringing them more revenue. But as other conferences began to sign increasingly massive media deals, the Pac-12 Network began to lag behind simply because it wasn’t as available as all of its rival channels.

Is There Any Way for the Pac-12 to Survive?

As things currently stand with the conference, the Pac-12 is all but dead. The conference’s problems began when UCLA and USC announced in summer of 2022 that they’d be leaving for the Big Ten. Without those marquee programs, it became less easy to convince potential broadcast partners to buy the conference’s media rights going forward.

That problem spilled into 2023, and suddenly the expiration of the conference’s deal with ESPN and Fox in 2024 loomed large. ESPN pulled out of negotiations with the Pac-12 in May, creating even more uncertainty about its future. The Colorado Buffaloes announced they’d be leaving the conference in late July, just as talks began to heat up with Apple for a potentially streaming-heavy deal.

But when those talks ultimately ended in failure, the final curtain fell for the conference. Arizona decided it was leaving in the first week of August, and on the same day Oregon, Washington, Arizona State, and Utah all declared their intentions to sign with a new conference.

That left the Pac-12 just two schools: Oregon State and Washington State. That’s where the conference stands currently, and though NCAA rules permit those two schools a two-year window to attract at least six more schools to the conference, it seems dubious that they’ll be able to woo enough programs to the current Pac-2 to make it a viable conference once again.

Oregon State and Washington State are highly unlikely to keep the Pac-12 Network going considering they’ll essentially have to go it alone financially to keep the network on its feet. Layoffs are slated to begin at the channel on Jan. 5, and the vast majority of its employees will be gone by the end of June 2024.