Pac-12 considers releasing injury reports, selling data rights to betting companies

The Pac-12 Conference is considering a future deal with betting companies to capitalize on the rapidly growing sports betting world. According to conference commissioner George Kliavkoff, the conference is evaluating the idea of releasing weekly injury reports — as well as directly selling their data rights to a betting company if the deal is beneficial.

Pac-12 evaluating major betting deals

“The Pac-12 plans to consider releasing weekly injury reports amid the proliferation of state-sponsored sports betting,” Kliavkoff told CBS Sports. “The initiative comes as the Pac-12 is also considering selling its data rights to capitalize on the betting wave that is sweeping through college athletics.”

The two decisions being looked at by the conference as directly related to each other, as weekly injury reports would make potential data rights deals more valuable as a “product.” As Kliavkoff explains, making the data available would be something that could create a new stream of revenue for the college football landscape.

“The concept is, if we’re going to collectively be selling our data and that data is going to be used for sports betting, we have to figure out a way to be consistent — not just across my conference but across conferences with respect to how we share injury data,” Kliavkoff said.

Outside of allowing the Pac-12 to capitalize on their own data rights in the sports betting market, the decision to publicize injury reports comes with additional benefits to the integrity of the sport as well according to proponents of the idea. Professional sports — like the NFL specifically — mandate standardized injury reports weekly to keep information public.

By doing a similar thing in college football, it could potentially cut down on purposefully misleading information or even game-fixing at worst. With information readily available through a standard method and channel, the potential for selling information illegally drops as well.

People who oppose the decision highlight that player’s private information should continue to be handled by the programs and not subject to public release. The report indicated that the Pac-12 was considering making injury reports as simple as “available” or “unavailable” to keep specifics hidden for the players — while still informing bettors about a player’s availability for a game.