Yeah the hate obsession on this board for Baylor is weird. They are dislikable and some ugly things have happened there, but similar things have happened elsewhere too.
Report: OU & Texas reach out to join SEC
- Thread starter BigJCy
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Yeah the hate obsession on this board for Baylor is weird. They are dislikable and some ugly things have happened there, but similar things have happened elsewhere too.
The SEC adding those four teams isn't about increasing everyone's payout, its about the SEC keeping themselves out of an ugly lawsuit a few years down the road.
That's what I was thinking. They wouldn't get a full cut to start anyways but why dole out anything to schools who don't bring in anywhere close to what they'd be getting. I have a hard time seeing the rest of the schools being ok with taking a smaller piece of the pie.
Seems shortsighted if that's the reason.
SEC with OU and UT expected to get $70MM/year per school for TV money = $1.12B total value. Assume (charitably, considering TCU/Baylor fan base size) that those four schools are worth $20MM/year. Pie grows to $1.2B but gets split 20 ways now. That's suddenly $60MM/year per school.
So that's basically a $160MM hit, every year, in perpetuity, in order to avoid a lawsuit from 8 schools that have a collective expectation of about $300MM/year in TV money for only four more years - and will still get half of that with OU and UT gone anyway.
If the SEC really thinks that a Big 12 suit is worth more than $160MM/year for decades, then we probably would all already be in the SEC by now.
I appreciate your work on this and agree your numbers are probably in the ballpark. I am surprised Texas Tech isn't higher viewership. They are larger enrollment (and thus alumni) than ISU. Their primary problem must be no large metros close by and outside of Lubbock, most casual fans are probably OU or UT.
Also, it will be interesting IF Prime gets into college football, the kickoff times they instill. I think the existing "glory" kickoff times are probably still prime (pun intended) but with viewership being more on a dedicated effort to login and find your team vs. casual browsing and stopping to watch, would kickoff times matter as much as they seem to now? IDK, maybe people will browse Prime for football games same as they do cable channels.
There is a future loss claim of $20 million (at least) per year lost revenue * a 10 year (at least) media deal * however many R8 schools don't find a good-paying home because OU/UT/ESPN/SEC broke the Big 12 bylaws and colluded against the Remaining 8 members and prevented them from getting a new P5-level contract. Plus, there could be punitive damages levied above the future loss damages. And no school wants their AD and president on the stand spilling all the dirt.
Nobody knows how juries and judges roll...maybe they award a pittance, or maybe they go medieval on the defendant.
So then explain to everyone instead of doing what you did last Thursday.
Make a bunch of statements like they’re fact and then try to pretend you’re above it all. If you read the contract, you should make your case.
That is one of the interesting differences about streaming. They have essentially unlimited bandwidth. A "channel" can only show one game at once. Prime Video could determine the time of day that most Iowa State and West Virginia fans would watch a game, and then schedule it for that time - even if that's the same time as Oklahoma State and TCU or whatever. There will be very smart people working to put together schedules to maximize viewership, and they will have an advantage that ESPN doesn't that they can overlap games as much as they wish without worrying about "channels."
Another difference was already mentioned, which is that a viewer could choose to listen to the ISU play by play or the WVU one (or a neutral one, maybe, if Amazon brought their own crew to the stadium).
The worst posts on this board are those and similar ones where posters draw up any number of ridiculous divisions or pods or new playoff setups.
Guys, nobody really cares what you think *should* happen. I want to discuss what *will* happen. I get it's a message board and all discussion is relevant. Just my perspective. It's like telling someone about a dream you had last night. They don't care.
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Agree and might add that the times can skew specifically to each viewers preference.
I care. Tell me your dreams, especially Hawk trolls, so the ISU football team can crush them.
Same would be true for most other conferences top 2-3 teams, so what? I add a third because other conferences have more teams.Interesting. It would be cool to see how that compares across conferences.
The Athletic did an interesting piece on 4 million+ viewers games across conferences. The Big 12 was essentially 3rd if you take ND away from the ACC. But with out OU/Texas, the Big 12 had just two games that hit those numbers. That’s why none of the remaining 8 are in high demand.
Staples: Why would the Big Ten form an alliance with the ACC and Pac-12? It’s all about TV’s ‘Four Million Club’
One way for conferences to get as much money as possible from TV? Get matchups that draw 4,000,000+.theathletic.com
Do you honestly think the SEC gives two ***** about "football programs in Texas" when they've already got Texas and A&M, the two biggest schools in the state? Adding Baylor, TCU, hell, even TT serves them absolutely no purpose other than getting the Big 12 shut down quicker. Do you really think they're desperate enough to take schools they have zero interest in just to get the conference shut down a few more years earlier? If the rumor were TT, OSU, KU, and ISU, I'd be much closer to believing it than any idea that the SEC has any kind of interest in Baylor or TCU.
I have no idea how this works. Would Amazon have to pay a lump sum to the conference and then crapshoot the games or could a base amount be set and then teams get $x per streaming eyeballs per game? Thus the more popular teams still get more $ (sorry KU).
Good stuff as always! I assume this analysis doesn’t take into account the network and time differences. ISU and OSU do pretty damn well and then add the network/time and promotion that OUUT get and Tier 2 closes some on Tier 1.
They sure could, and they would have instant, 100% accurate viewership figures as well. It would depend on what the conference negotiated and preferred.
This one did not, it was just a rough average to ballpark quick numbers. On your points:
Time Slots - They really don't matter too much, as long as the East Coast has people tuning it. That's where the vast majority of the population resides, so its not to much of a surprise. Last year the average noon eastern, afternoon (2-5pm est), and Primetime, slots were within 10% of each other. The late night games, however, drew a quarter of the other slots.
Channels - Tier 1 channels, e.g ABC/NBC/CBS/FOX, all draw the highest amount. This shouldn't be too shocking as even people without cable get these stations, so they're in more households, and they get marketed better so people know what to watch. Even people who aren't fans will watch these to see what happens.
Tier 2 channels (ESPNU/2, FS1, etc) draw next to nothing. ESPN is the only cable channel that will pull down respectable numbers, that USA blip was one game. Conference channels draw around the same as FS2, the BTN number there is the average of 4 games total that have been rated because they drew enough of an audience. Seriously, 4, its like 10% of the total amount of games shown ... some watched only by the people filming it.
This one matters far more. For instance Iowa State had 3 games on T2 channels, where none of the teams above it in the total audiences had any. Iowa State's average audience for T1 games (which includes ESPN here) was 2.16m and their average audience on T2 channels was 487k. That's a big deal. Put those on ESPN and you're drawing about 3-4m more people in total.
Fox has grown over the past few years, especially as they started getting the Big Noon Kickoff going. Its in its infancy, but is producing results. It will be interesting to see what CBS does once the SEC leaves in a few years. They don't want to pay the big numbers, but they basically built the SEC with their single game marketing. Whoever takes a haircut to grab those 15 time slots at 3:30 eastern will get a sizable boost of exposure.
Tech has respectable numbers, but didn't have a great season. Two things that kept it down were its max potential. When Iowa State and Oklahoma played during the regular season they drew 3.8m people. The highest Tech had this year was 2.8m against Texas. Additionally, they had more games on T2.
If they had 10 wins and were playing for a championship I'd expect their numbers to be the same as OkSt/ISU. To the winners go the spoils.
As for Prime, they could have them on whenever you wanted. Streaming services don't have the issue the channels due, which is they can only broadcast one national game at a time (though ABC likes to do splits where they put two or three games on at the same time across the country, NFL style, to maximize total audience).
Yep. You have your Tier 2 channels (FS1, FS2, ESPN2, ESPNU, or ESPN+) and then your Tier 1 channels (ABC, Fox, ESPN) for the Big 12 games. Here's how many last year's games went on the Tier 2 channels: Baylor - 5 games, KSU - 4, ISU - 3, Tech - 6, Kansas - 6, WVU - 3, TCU - 6, OSU - 1. Texas and OU - 0 games.
