A major change for Fresno State Athletics as the university is leaving Learfield Sports, a third-party rights holder, to keep those rights in-house.
The athletic department is calling its new media rights entity “Bulldog Sports Enterprises.” Chris Pachecho, a former football player under Jim Sweeney, owns a radio station & other local businesses & will serve as president of BSE.
“We’re betting on ourselves and there’s no other person I’d rather than Chris and his team,” Fresno State athletic director Garrett Klassy said.
If this bet hits, then the Bulldogs will get big profits. The deal is for five years and is being managed in-house, with 80 percent of the profits staying with Fresno State and 20 percent going to Bulldog Sports Enterprises and its staff.
“We have a unique situation, not too many providers have access to a radio station or a bunch of sign companies so those two things are critical components to what we do,” Pacheco said.
Klassy oversaw a similar media-rights change when he was the deputy athletics director at the University of Nebraska, which has since returned to a third-party media-rights holder.
“One of the things I really underestimated when we made this move at Nebraska is how much local businesses like writing checks back to the university and not to a third party that’s located in some other area,” he said.
Klassy added that now is the time for a change here at Fresno State because of the increased exposure teams will be getting with the move to the Pac-12 on July 1st.
Sticking with Walberg
Klassy also made a commitment to Vance Walberg, saying “(he) is our basketball coach and he will be for next year absolutely.” After getting knocked out in the 1st round of the Mountain West Conference Tournament, FS finished with a record of 13-19. In his two years leading the program, Walberg’s teams have had a record of 19-45.
“Coach Walberg’s issues aren’t Coach Walberg’s,” Klassy said. “We need to fix the infrastructure and this is one key step in fixing the infrastructure of our revenue of Fresno State moving forward.”
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