The head of the California pension fund pitching an investment deal to the Big Ten is asking supporters to “pray” for the embattled proposal to succeed.
On Wednesday, Jagdeep Singh Bachher, the chief investment officer at UC Investments, addressed the now-paused deal during a presentation to the University of California regents investments committee Wednesday. “I hope it happens, and I just request you all do a little prayer for us,” he said. UC Investments is the pension fund for employees of the University of California system.
Bachher also confirmed UC Investments’s earlier statement suggesting the deal is on pause. “There is no deal on the table thanks to many regental approval processes that need to happen,” he said.
The beleaguered deal would require the Big Ten to spin off its assets—including media rights—into a separate entity called Big Ten Enterprises. UC Investments would pay $2.4 billion to buy a 10% equity stake in that entity. Member schools and the Big Ten conference would all receive stakes.
As part of the deal, schools would be required to sign a grant of rights to bind the conference together until 2046.
The deal was derailed by the boards at Michigan and USC, who opposed it for a multitude of reasons and said they would not sign on.
There was also a growing opposition from a number of Big Ten university board members across the country who said they had not been able to see key details about the deal, and were told their university presidents could decide to sign onto it without their approval.
Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti had continued to push the deal despite its opposition, with the conference planning tentatively to schedule a vote for November that could end up leaving Michigan and USC out of the deal altogether. This news prompted fiery comments in the press from two Michigan regents; regent Jordan Acker suggested in a SiriusXM radio interview that the Wolverines could go independent if the rest of the league signed a grant of rights without them.
Mark Bernstein, chairman of the Michigan board of regents, told the Associated Press this week that Petitti attempted to “strong-arm” Michigan in a move that he said “calls into question his continued leadership of the Big Ten Conference.”
UC Investments announced it had officially put the deal on pause in a statement Monday because it hoped all Big Ten schools would sign on. The pension fund also said it needed more time to do its own “due diligence.”
On Wednesday, Bachher reiterated his support for the deal, suggesting that college sports “is that next attractive opportunity within the whole sports landscape,” and he said he estimates the potential value of Big Ten Enterprises at $24 billion—and thinks it could yield a return profile of more than 12%.
“That would have made it one of the top ten media and entertainment companies in the world in size and scale,” he said, before asking for a prayer.
