ESPN, Fox Payouts To Pac-12 Revealed In E-mail Filed In O'Bannon Lawsuit

Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott in a confidential e-mail to the conference’s presidents and chancellors two years ago detailed payments from ESPN and Fox, including a $30M "signing bonus," according to Jon Wilner of the SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS. The deal also "features a 5.1% escalator." The email is "dated May 1, 2011, a few days before the conference announced the $3 billion, 12-year deal with Fox and ESPN." It is "among the countless documents filed in Ed O’Bannon’s lawsuit against the NCAA." The documents show that ESPN is a "slightly larger rights-holder than Fox (53% to 47%)." A chart of yearly payouts from '13-24 follows. Wilner noted calculating each school's share of the payouts is "not quite as simple as dividing the numbers by 12." But in five years it can be assumed that "each school will receive" an estimated $30M "from the combination of the ESPN/Fox windfall, the football playoff/bowl money and the March Madness payouts" (MERCURYNEWS.com, 6/17).