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Pleasanton’s Goal Line Studios, the media production space created by late football legend John Madden, has become the new home of pregame, halftime and postgame shows for the Pac-12 as the sports conference gears up for the next stage of its rebirth next year.
Coverage this football season focuses on the Pac-12’s only two remaining members, Oregon State and Washington State, with the new studio debuting Sept. 6 for shows broadcast as part of “CW Football Saturday” programming. But anticipation is high for the potential of more shows and content with seven new schools scheduled to join the conference for the 2026-27 academic year.
Pac-12 Enterprises – the successor to Pac-12 Networks, which broadcast games and analysis shows for the old Pac-12 and had moved its entire operations to San Ramon from San Francisco in 2023 – found itself searching for solutions in the new reality as a conference with just the Beavers and Cougars. The 10 other teams defected to other conferences in the summer of 2024, such as UCLA, Oregon and USC to the Big Ten and Cal and Stanford to the ACC.
“After the first year of Pac-12 Enterprises’ operations in San Ramon (in 2024), servicing Oregon State and Washington State broadcast production commitments as well as introducing a dozen new external clients, a discovery was made. Right down the street in the East Bay, a pretty notable studio facility existed with legendary ties to West Coast Football: Goal Line Studios,” the conference said in its fact sheet on the new broadcasting deal.
Founded by longtime Pleasanton resident John Madden, Goal Line Studios is now led by Joe Madden after his father’s death in late 2021 – and the 7,000-square-foot studio in Pleasanton was modernized in March 2023.
Pac-12 Enterprises and Goal Line Studios have inked an exclusive partnership deal for football pregame, halftime and postgame shows for CW Sports until 2031. News of the agreement was first reported by Sportico.
As for the prospect of coverage for other sports this year or in the future, “It’s a developing collaboration, right now the only thing locked in is football for this season,” Pac-12 Enterprises’ Michael Molinari told the Pleasanton Weekly.
The shows will be filmed at the studio in Pleasanton and connected to the Pac-12 control room in San Ramon, where the programs will be produced, conference officials told the Weekly.
The setup in Pleasanton includes “a massive LED wall (106 feet by 20 feet) for an immersive viewing experience” and “the only plug-and-play live broadcast multicamera virtual production studio in Northern California”, according to Goal Line Studios.
Starting with the 2026 fall sports season, the Pac-12 membership is slated to increase to nine schools with the additions of Boise State, Fresno State, Colorado State, Gonzaga, San Diego State, Texas State and Utah State.
