The televising of college football is big, big business. Remember all that college sports conference realignment stuff? That was driven by college football, as conference members scrambled over each other in an effort to align themselves with a conference that has a strong television deal. The development of conference channels also became a vogue thing to do, with, most notably, the SEC’s partnership with ESPN.
That being said, not all things are equal in the land of securing a broadcast outlet when these conferences launch their channels. Much like the CBS/Time Warner dispute–which, should be noted, is an argument over money that only hurts the subscribers–one college athletic conference is having some trouble getting on DirecTV, and so, they’ve decided to fight back by using a little bit of social media. The conference in question, the Pac-12, has come up with an idea suggesting fans of the conference’s teams who have DirecTV should cancel their subscription and find a provider that carries the Pac-12 Channel.
The details were revealed in a release posted at the Pac-12’s official site:
Entering its second season of covering Pac-12 football, Pac-12 Networks is distributed on more than 50 video providers across the country, including three of the four largest. Despite being offered the same deal that all of the other providers have agreed to, DirecTV remains unwilling to reach an agreement, and the “Compare” campaign is the latest step by Pac-12 Networks to urge fans to drop DirecTV and switch to another provider.
The campaign consists of 30-second spots that poke fun at DirecTV’s decision to not carry the network. Here are a few of the videos being used:
Seeing how there are 12 teams in the Pac-12, there are 9 more videos, all of which make a play on the team’s mascot. Well, except for the Utah copy. Instead of showing Utes, they just show the state of Utah. Keep it simple, and all that. If you’d like to see the rest of the videos, you can so at the Pac-12’s site. With that in mind, how many Pac-12 fans would have to leave DirecTV before they reconsidered?