Who needs WME when you have professor of who knows what lol. Might not even put the blame on GK's friend because sounds like they came up with about a mid 30s estimate. The presidents just decided to listen to some professor instead of that. Like I say presidents aren't business people but like the article says GK should have pushed back hard on them as commish and get them to come to grips with reality.
Also sounds like Washington was the one who decided to leave first and Oregon followed not the other way around.
From the article:
Kliavkoff brought the schools an ESPN offer of $30 million per school annually for all of their rights. The Pac-12’s analysis said the schools would be worth somewhere in the mid-$30-million range apiece, so they could go back to ESPN with a reasonable counter in the high $30-million-range and maybe the two sides would end up around $35 million.
When the Pac-12 CEO group met to discuss the offer, one of the league presidents had other ideas. The president worked with a professor on his campus to come up with their own estimate of what the 10 schools should get based on their market value: $50 million.
“George and our media consultant were pretty clear there was some risk, but they said, ‘Nope, our numbers show we’re worth this, go ask for it,’” a source with direct knowledge of the negotiations not authorized to speak publicly about them told The Times. “... ESPN did not react very well to it.”
Given the stakes of negotiations, a source with experience negotiating media rights agreements told The Times, Kliavkoff should have been more forceful pushing back against the high counteroffer.
How did the Pac-12 die? These surprising decisions by USC, Oregon, Washington and others thwarted efforts to save the conference.
www.latimes.com