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MWC TV Deal Announced

If I am reading the tea leaves correctly, the backstabbers will get about $1M more a year than the teams in the MWC. That is not chump change but one has to wonder what might have been had all the teams merged into one conference?
 
Bear Claw said:
If I am reading the tea leaves correctly, the backstabbers will get about $1M more a year than the teams in the MWC. That is not chump change but one has to wonder what might have been had all the teams merged into one conference?
Click to expand...
That's pretty easy to answer: It would have been roughly the same value of the combined TV deals. Why a merger didn't happen will be one of the most maddening questions to come out of realignment.
 
Bear Claw said:
If I am reading the tea leaves correctly, the backstabbers will get about $1M more a year than the teams in the MWC. That is not chump change but one has to wonder what might have been had all the teams merged into one conference?
Click to expand...
If a merger had happened, my guess is we all would have got what the PAC 8 just got.
 
cowpoke pride said:
If a merger had happened, my guess is we all would have got what the PAC 8 just got.
Click to expand...
I would imagine more than what they got. I think by having 2 leagues competing for the same money and spots, gave the TV providers leverage that they wouldn't have had otherwise. If you have the only show on the west coast it helps with leverage. Could be wrong about that though. Just my 2 cents.
 
rich22 said:
I would imagine more than what they got. I think by having 2 leagues competing for the same money and spots, gave the TV providers leverage that they wouldn't have had otherwise. If you have the only show on the west coast it helps with leverage. Could be wrong about that though. Just my 2 cents.
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I think you are right about that. Probably would have ended up around 125% of what PAC got. Would have been nice for Wyoming as it would mean more money outright and we wouldn't of had to give up a higher amount to UNLV and Air Force - still makes me grimace every time I hear these two referenced as our "flagship programs".

In reality, we will never know. PAC thought they could get better programs than what the bottom of the MWC had to offer. MWC though they could ring a bunch of money out of the PAC for poaching their teams. Both are likely to end up untrue and everyone will be in a worse spot for it. Yay!
 
TheRealUW said:
I think you are right about that. Probably would have ended up around 125% of what PAC got. Would have been nice for Wyoming as it would mean more money outright and we wouldn't of had to give up a higher amount to UNLV and Air Force - still makes me grimace every time I hear these two referenced as our "flagship programs".

In reality, we will never know. PAC thought they could get better programs than what the bottom of the MWC had to offer. MWC though they could ring a bunch of money out of the PAC for poaching their teams. Both are likely to end up untrue and everyone will be in a worse spot for it. Yay!
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There are some winners in better spots. Such as UTEP who has done nothing on the field or court to support the extra money and promotion and Texas State.
 
Bryoming said:
That's pretty easy to answer: It would have been roughly the same value of the combined TV deals. Why a merger didn't happen will be one of the most maddening questions to come out of realignment.
Click to expand...
It's not hard to figure out. This was all about not having to go to Laramie. End of story.
 
rich22 said:
I would imagine more than what they got. I think by having 2 leagues competing for the same money and spots, gave the TV providers leverage that they wouldn't have had otherwise. If you have the only show on the west coast it helps with leverage. Could be wrong about that though. Just my 2 cents.
Click to expand...

Hence my "divide and conquer" comment earlier.
 
If direct-to-consumer football proves viable at scale, the Mountain West’s approach could look visionary. If streaming revenue underperforms, the Pac-12’s guaranteed structure will look safer. Two conferences, two strategies and by 2028, we’ll find out which one fans, and the market, value more.

theramblinroundup.com

Who Won? Pac-12 all-in on linear TV. MWC leaves room to grow.

By Luke Fletcher | Ft. Collins, CO By the time the 2026 college football season kicks off, two western conferences will be operating under two very different media strategies. On paper, the rebuilt…
theramblinroundup.com theramblinroundup.com
 
WYOFLETCH said:
If direct-to-consumer football proves viable at scale, the Mountain West’s approach could look visionary. If streaming revenue underperforms, the Pac-12’s guaranteed structure will look safer. Two conferences, two strategies and by 2028, we’ll find out which one fans, and the market, value more.

theramblinroundup.com

Who Won? Pac-12 all-in on linear TV. MWC leaves room to grow.

By Luke Fletcher | Ft. Collins, CO By the time the 2026 college football season kicks off, two western conferences will be operating under two very different media strategies. On paper, the rebuilt…
theramblinroundup.com theramblinroundup.com
Click to expand...
Streaming our second and third tier games isn’t visionary. It’s the last act of a desperate conference.

We are likely paying Kiswe for the streaming infrastructure. At minimum, the deal is set up as a revenue split, and Kiswe likely gets 50% or more of any revenue generated.

The revenue and subscriber projections cited above are fantasy land. Total fiction. Think about it this way:

Wyoming’s official YouTube channel has about 6,000 subscribers. That’s for a FREE service available on any device known to man. No, it doesn’t show live games so it is not apples to apples. But it is a good indicator of how many “die hard” fans are out there who want regular video content.

The total subscriber base to the MW product, by my math, will be 50,000 on the high end. This is how I get there: the average viewership for a MW football game on FS1 last year was about 120,000 to 300,000 viewers. Remove the premium for many of those games featuring programs that are leaving, and I think it’s safe to call the average tv audience about 100,000 to 200,000 viewers. Industry standard for streaming DTC conversion is about 15% to 20% of the typical cable audience. Looking at this through the most optimistic lense, if the MW captures 20% of 200,000, they would have about 40,000 “die hard” fans who will likely pay to watch non-linear games. And because I want to be as generous as possible, I am going to plus this number up to 50,000 to capture some opposing team fans, etc.

If the MW product as whole has 50,000 subscribers, what portion of that are Wyoming-specific? Somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 is my guess. Let’s call it 7,500.

7,500 * $60 in annual revenue is $450,000. Please note there is NO WAY we keep 7,500 subscribers year round. Of course, no one is going to be a subscriber to this service in the summer. So let’s reduce this number by 1/3 just to be safe. This gives us about $300,000 in annual revenue.

But! Kiswe needs their chunk of the 50/50, so now we’re down to about $150,000 in likely annual revenue. And we still haven’t paid any of our own production costs for these games. Granted, we are incurring those costs now and seeing no revenue, so this does represent some improvement.

But here is the kicker… almost no one subscribes to a streaming product for “free.” To convert a customer to a paid service requires marketing dollars. It’s just a fact of life.

Being added as a “channel” on Amazon? That’s not free. Amazon typically charges a “bounty” of $20ish per subscriber. Rule of thumb acquisition costs for streaming customers runs as high as $50/user.

What portion of acquisition costs will be funded by the individual schools versus the conference? We have no idea. What does Kiswe’s deal with the MW look like? No idea. What does Kiswe’s deal with Amazon look like? No idea.

Through my day job, I spend many millions in online digital marketing, especially through OTT channels like YouTubeTV. I know and talk to people in this industry every day. I’m not making these numbers up. These are educated guesses based on input from people who work around this stuff.

Wyoming will return almost no net revenue from this streaming arrangement. I say “almost no” because there is a potential to make a little. Call it $100,000 or so if we really shoot the moon. But for immaterial money like that I would argue we should have simply put the games on YouTube and built a channel that way. We would have better penetration, wider availability, and access to the largest platform on Earth.
 
TheCup said:
Streaming our second and third tier games isn’t visionary. It’s the last act of a desperate conference.

We are likely paying Kiswe for the streaming infrastructure. At minimum, the deal is set up as a revenue split, and Kiswe likely gets 50% or more of any revenue generated.

The revenue and subscriber projections cited above are fantasy land. Total fiction. Think about it this way:

Wyoming’s official YouTube channel has about 6,000 subscribers. That’s for a FREE service available on any device known to man. No, it doesn’t show live games so it is not apples to apples. But it is a good indicator of how many “die hard” fans are out there who want regular video content.

The total subscriber base to the MW product, by my math, will be 50,000 on the high end. This is how I get there: the average viewership for a MW football game on FS1 last year was about 120,000 to 300,000 viewers. Remove the premium for many of those games featuring programs that are leaving, and I think it’s safe to call the average tv audience about 100,000 to 200,000 viewers. Industry standard for streaming DTC conversion is about 15% to 20% of the typical cable audience. Looking at this through the most optimistic lense, if the MW captures 20% of 200,000, they would have about 40,000 “die hard” fans who will likely pay to watch non-linear games. And because I want to be as generous as possible, I am going to plus this number up to 50,000 to capture some opposing team fans, etc.

If the MW product as whole has 50,000 subscribers, what portion of that are Wyoming-specific? Somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 is my guess. Let’s call it 7,500.

7,500 * $60 in annual revenue is $450,000. Please note there is NO WAY we keep 7,500 subscribers year round. Of course, no one is going to be a subscriber to this service in the summer. So let’s reduce this number by 1/3 just to be safe. This gives us about $300,000 in annual revenue.

But! Kiswe needs their chunk of the 50/50, so now we’re down to about $150,000 in likely annual revenue. And we still haven’t paid any of our own production costs for these games. Granted, we are incurring those costs now and seeing no revenue, so this does represent some improvement.

But here is the kicker… almost no one subscribes to a streaming product for “free.” To convert a customer to a paid service requires marketing dollars. It’s just a fact of life.

Being added as a “channel” on Amazon? That’s not free. Amazon typically charges a “bounty” of $20ish per subscriber. Rule of thumb acquisition costs for streaming customers runs as high as $50/user.

What portion of acquisition costs will be funded by the individual schools versus the conference? We have no idea. What does Kiswe’s deal with the MW look like? No idea. What does Kiswe’s deal with Amazon look like? No idea.

Through my day job, I spend many millions in online digital marketing, especially through OTT channels like YouTubeTV. I know and talk to people in this industry every day. I’m not making these numbers up. These are educated guesses based on input from people who work around this stuff.

Wyoming will return almost no net revenue from this streaming arrangement. I say “almost no” because there is a potential to make a little. Call it $100,000 or so if we really shoot the moon. But for immaterial money like that I would argue we should have simply put the games on YouTube and built a channel that way. We would have better penetration, wider availability, and access to the largest platform on Earth.
Click to expand...
I appreciate the thoughtful breakdown and the industry perspective — those are important considerations. But I think there’s some broader context that changes how this should be evaluated.

First, the Mountain West has already been paying to operate and produce content for a free app for years. Schools have been underwriting production for games that generated zero direct revenue. In 2025, institutions are still covering those costs while fans watch at no charge.

This move isn’t about chasing fantasy projections. It’s about shifting from a cost center to a revenue opportunity.

As outlined in https://theramblinroundup.com/2026/02/10/mountain-west-eyes-dtc-streaming-as-new-revenue-path/, the MW App powered by Kiswe will:
  • Run from the 2026–27 through 2031–32 seasons
  • Carry more than 1,000 live events annually
  • Feature two pricing tiers (monthly and annual)
  • Use a “fan-first” reinvestment model where subscribers choose their school and that school benefits directly
  • Be available on Roku, Apple TV, and Amazon Prime Channels
That structure mirrors what ESPN has done with ESPN+ and what Fox is building with its new FoxONE DTC strategy. The industry is clearly moving toward hybrid linear + direct subscription models. The Mountain West isn’t acting out of desperation, it’s aligning with the broader media trend.

Second, we’re talking about 19 football games on DTC. Those are Tier 3 rights, not Tier 2. The premium inventory remains on linear television. This isn’t the conference pulling games off TV; it’s monetizing content that otherwise would have been streamed free.

Third, even under conservative math say Wyoming nets $100K to $150K that is still materially better than paying production costs for a free platform every year.

Now, contrast that with the new Pac-12 structure. Their agreement places essentially their entire home football inventory on linear television, leaving little to no exclusive inventory for a standalone DTC product. That means if they ever want a direct-to-consumer presence, they’ll be in the same position the Mountain West has been in funding an app that doesn’t generate subscription revenue.

Even modest returns are preferable to zero returns plus operating costs. On acquisition costs you’re right, streaming customer acquisition isn’t free. But the Amazon Channel distribution, Roku integration, and conference-wide bundling reduce friction significantly compared to a standalone school trying to build on YouTube. And YouTube, while massive, doesn’t create subscription equity for the conference or member institutions. It builds platform equity for YouTube.

This isn’t about “shooting the moon.” It’s about:

• Converting existing free viewers into paying subscribers
• Giving schools upside tied to their own fan engagement
• Centralizing infrastructure instead of 12 schools funding parallel systems
• Creating a long-term digital asset rather than renting space on someone else’s platform

Will this turn Wyoming into a media powerhouse overnight? Of course not. But going from paying to stream for free → to potentially earning something while reducing operational burden is a rational evolution. Hey lets say Wyoming nets $500K on top of the $3.5M they will get all of a sudden they are getting $4M from TV revenue. not just $3.5M...

In today’s landscape, incremental revenue and cost control matter. Especially when every dollar can support roster retention and NIL collectives. It’s not visionary. But it is practical. And in this environment, practicality has value. Worst case scenario they can always sign with FoxOne or ESPN + because they can't get the DTC subscription right.
 
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