Exactly this. Ohio State/Michigan vs a g5 team will still get ~3 million viewers if on Fox/NBC/CBS
Realignment Megathread (All The Moves)
- Thread starter ISUcyclones11
- Start date
I respect your reply. But, considering the cash reserves that both Apple and Amazon have not to mention their massive valuation, they could easily have purchased Disney and/or Fox if they wanted. So, in some aspect I still disagree. There's a reason we, outside the real numbers, do not see. I, personally, think they think that ESPN and Fox over extended themselves and are waiting until the next negotiations to see if the chaos is cured.
The answer is that the conferences don’t want to go to streaming yet. The Pac12 had an offer from Apple for all streaming, they turned it down and dissolved the conference before the AD’s wanted to go that route
The streaming entities didn't make high enough offers to make a significant switch to streaming worthwhile (e.g. Amazon sublicense bid to B10/Fox; Apple bid to PAC). That Apple bid was not high enough to keep the PAC together regardless of any aversion to streaming at that time.
Without access to CFP rights for Amazon and Apple, that was a bigger reason for those bids not being higher so the aversion to streaming is being overstated on your end. Media rights pooling with access to CFP rights for all bidders fixes that.
Well that’s a bit of revisionist history. They turned it down because they were told they could get more elsewhere. They dissolved because the Big10 took their biggest property. If USC and UCLA hadn’t been negotiating their departure during the same time they were negotiating the TV deals, I’d imagine there was a good chance the PAC would have ended up taking that offer. But once those two announced their departure, it was over.
I wasn't implying streaming. But, streaming can do to OTA what the internet did to telecom. It has the ability to regionalize on a case-by-case basis and use OTA to complete it. The days of satellites beaming regions in space are over, IMO. With the losses piling up at the major OTAs, I see an opportunity for outright buying ala ESPN/ABC, or massive subcontracting regional telecasts.
I'd be surprised if most Iowa State fans don't have the same viewing habits as me. Iowa State first then B12 impacting Iowa State. After that a major drop off. My point is, I believe more eyeballs would prefer to watch their local vs an out of conference major. And, even then with all the options for entertainment these days, I'll bet most other viewers are 'at the beach' so to speak.
The only other type of audiences I really can't put numbers to are absolute couch potatoes for CFB and gamblers. Those aren't in my wheelhouse, but I'd be curious what those numbers are.
This was after the LA schools left.
The AD’s didn’t want a streaming only service and the amount wasn’t high enough to convince them to go off over the air. No conference wanted to move to streaming as a primary for fear of the audience not following as has been show correct so far
Oh I totally agree that streaming will one day take over. Might even be in the 2030’s with the new media deals. It’s just that during the last media deals the conferences didn’t want to be the first and I don’t think their was some absurd offer that was significantly higher
Randomly came across this SI article from summer 1990. Really interesting and prophetic read about realignment thoughts 35 years ago.
vault.si.com
KICKING OFF TO CHAOS
It is New Year's Day 1998. You're comfortably settled into your favorite beanbag chair (they're back in vogue). Time to take in a little football. You click
vault.si.com
For all the talk of "it's the future" moving your product over from OTA to streaming kills your viewing numbers. The country still has a lot of people that are still connected and do not stream.
Look at any game that was only streamed and most lag far below the OTA games that week.
Look at any game that was only streamed and most lag far below the OTA games that week.
I guess it depends on which is more valuable? 3M viewers paying $0 for OTA (ie ad revenue only), or 500k viewers paying $8.99/month plus less ad revenue.
If streaming was bringing in the money, every major event would be on that platform. They are not, the money is just not there to do any more than dip your toe in right now. Look at the tv ratings from any week, and being on the four networks or ESPN is the most important component. The further you move away from those, the lower the numbers.
You are also not getting 500,000 viewers from streaming unless it someone like the Chiefs in the NFL, few college teams are going to approach anywhere near that number, maybe Alabama or Ohio State and few others.
If OTA, had the better model, then why not just extend it to streaming? I know I'd be ok with it, in lieu of charging me an additional subscription.
That 8.99 is more like 15.99 now. Or 39.99 in espns case. While lot higher then th $10 they get from cable providers
It's coming we are just not there yet. Most people want convenience more than anything, and not having to search all over trying to figure out which steaming service is offering the game, and do they have that service. They want to go over to their tv, turn it on and find the game. How they get it, over the air, through satellite or streaming does not matter, they what it all together in one place and easy to find.
We stream everything, and I will admit, it's a pain sometimes finding which service will be showing the game. Before we had everything through DirectTV, and could easily find and watch 90% of the games. Now it's all over the place and the average sports fan just says "screw it" and watches a different game.
Don't make it into an either/or decision point for CFB because like the NFL, there is going to be a mix on a going forward basis. The biggest GOTWs and the majority of the CFP will be on OTA and/or ESPN. The decision point will be how much of the remaining CFB inventory will be streamed and the biggest obstacle to fully monetizing both OTA and streaming is the existing ESPN/Fox stranglehold on the sport. And that stranglehold has got to be broken up with full FBS media rights pooling and bidding those rights out NFL style in order to at least double existing media revenues.
Someone please come up with commodity traded advertising. That'd be a game changer. Viewing statistics would be live and because it's verifiable, accurate. Advertisers already have their advertisement ready, they bid it minutes before it airs and closing bids are, say 1 minute before airtime and the slot is given a key that only the winning bid gets, and the rest is up to the advertiser to make sure it airs. It's a near real-time free-market system. That's when you'd see the airing change significantly.
I would venture to say the ad revenue on $3MM viewers multiplied by several games each month OTA is higher than $500K viewers paying $8.99 for the entire month of games. Otherwise, there would be far less OTA and more streaming.
How much more can they break it up? The B10 has games now on Fox, NBC, BTN, BTN+, Peacock and a few other streaming services. Their fans are looking all over the place trying to figure out where to watch their games. That is the problem, until we can get everything group together under one platform, it's going to continue to be a pain for the fans.
If Apple or Youtube thought they could make a go of it, they would bid up the price to make sure they won, and still make money. Right now the money is just not there for them to do it.
