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The Pac-12 on Tuesday announced what it described as the "first-ever, all-encompassing data technology partnership in collegiate athletics" — an agreement with Tempus Ex Machina that's designed to improve the aggregation of statistics for teams and fans alike.
It's not a move into the world of sports gambling, yet.
"We will fail if people come away from this thinking that we're doing gambling now," Pac-12 Networks president Mark Shuken said.
"We do not have that charter from the presidents and chancellors."
In that regard, the deal with Tempus Ex appears to differ from the Mid-American Conference's partnership with Genius Sports. Announced last week, the arrangement reportedly allows Genius Sports to broker deals with gambling companies that want access to the MAC's real-time statistical data in all sports.
It's a new revenue stream for the schools, essentially.
The Pac-12 could certainly use a new revenue stream, but the partnership with Tempus Ex stops short of the direct sale of data to gambling sites.
Instead, it creates a foundation from which the conference eventually could sell its data to media, gaming or technology companies, if the presidents approve.
"This is all designed to be ready for our media rights negotiations," Shuken told the Hotline. "We're trying to get ahead of the future in terms of the fan experience and products and our ability to monetize our data."
(The media rights negotiations are expected to begin later this year or early in 2023.)
Tempus Ex, a San Francisco-based company whose clients include the NFL, uses machine learning to deliver what it calls "millisecond-latency data capture." The agreement will allow for infrastructure build-outs on the campuses, assisting teams with data analysis in real time.
The Tempus Ex technology is expected to be in place for the 2022 football season.
According to one member of the company's board of directors, it could help academically, as well.
"Tempus Ex is committed to providing students and student-athletes with access to the most advanced, cutting-edge technology on the field and in the classroom," former NFL receiver Larry Fitzgerald said in a news release.
"The Pac-12's students and faculty will be the first to build research, educational and commercial products on Tempus Ex's platform."
The deal is the latest example of advanced technology, media consumption and the desire for real-time data all converging on college sports when schools are desperate for new revenue streams.
It's a space Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff knows well following his tenure as president of MGM Sports and Entertainment.
"George came in and said, 'We must, in our media rights agreement, own our own data and be able to monetize it,"' Shuken said.
"This allows us to create a template to aggregate our data in real time and pursue (media rights deals) in any number of ways. But we are not in the betting business."
Jon Wilner's Pac-12 Hotline is brought to KSL.com through a partnership with the Bay Area News Group.
Jon Wilner has been covering college sports for decades and is an AP Top 25 football and basketball voter as well as a Heisman Trophy voter. He was named Beat Writer of the Year in 2013 by the Football Writers Association of America for his coverage of the Pac-12, won first place for feature writing in 2016 in the Associated Press Sports Editors writing contest and is a five-time APSE honoree. You can follow him on Twitter @WilnerHotline or send an email at jwilner@bayareanewsgroup.com.
Pac-12 Hotline: Subscribe to the Pac-12 Hotline Newsletter. Pac-12 Hotline is not endorsed or sponsored by the Pac-12 Conference, and the views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views of the Conference.
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Jon WilnerJon Wilner has been covering college sports for decades and is an AP Top 25 football and basketball voter as well as a Heisman Trophy voter. He was named Beat Writer of the Year in 2013 by the Football Writers Association of America for his coverage of the Pac-12, won first place for feature writing in 2016 in the Associated Press Sports Editors writing contest and is a five-time APSE honoree. You can follow him on Twitter @WilnerHotline or send an email at jwilner@bayareanewsgroup.com.
Pac-12 Hotline: Subscribe to the Pac-12 Hotline Newsletter. Pac-12 Hotline is not endorsed or sponsored by the Pac-12 Conference, and the views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views of the Conference.
