this youtube video was posted yesterday. If you go to the 36 minute mark, John Skipper, who was at the negotiating table whan the ACC signed their media deals a few years ago, talks about the value of the ACC merging with 8 teams from the Pac-12
geeeeezuz...I forgot the video
the key provision in the deals is an enforceable carriage contract with distributors (Comcast, DirectTV, etc) that has a tow tier fee assessed fro every subscriber according to the state a conference school was in. IIRC he said the in-conference fee was $2 and the out-of-conference fee was $.60. Meaning that if the Acc formed a Western division of 8 teams they could expand that subscriber fee to include California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado. THIS IS A MONTHLY FEE; $24 a year for every subscriber. His estimate was that there were at least 15M subscribers in those 6 states. That's 360M/year in subscriber fees alone and he's convinced it would compel the networks like ESPN to renegotiate their ACC contracts
it might also bring Amazon into the picture. The reporting about Amazon is that they are really interested in a 3-consecutive night package of content, especially Oregon/Washington. They could cross-promote the content on each night. The NFL at 8-9PM Eastern on Thursday night; the merged ACC/Pac-12 Friday night game at 7PM Eastern. And the after dark game Saturday night at 8-10PM eastern
I don't know how interested the ACC would be but if it's accurate that each of the Pac-12 schools was bring in 45M/year in carriage fees that's a fairly compelling argument