(08-17-2016 05:04 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  The downside to that of course is many sponsors, Madison Avenue if you will, will take 1 million viewers in NYC over 2 million in Birmingham.

The one thing that holds the SEC back, as compared to the Big Ten, is the demographics of their audience. The SEC audience is bigger by most accounts, at least in football, but by comparison they make less than the Big Ten because of the demographics.

I remember back in the day, I spent a short time working at WWE. And I remember in one meeting how pissed one of the marketing guys, after an argument about the ratings, and someone at UPN said to them "let's be frank. Yes you are the number one show on the network, by a good margin even, yet your ad prices are STILL the lowest of any show on the network. The ad execs don't like your audience. and demos, and no one wants to buy time." I remember the classic response "yeah but I just saw (so and so) buy some commercial time: obviously they think we are worthwhile." And he responded "sigh, those were make good ads because the CMA's ratings dropped this year."

The biggest lesson I learned in the month I worked there was how much they hated the Westminster Dog show, which used to preempt them one or two weeks per year. It drew 1/5 the ratings of their flagship show, and made USA 3 times the money per ad.

Markets matter. Audience size matters more. Who the audience is, "can" matter even more than that.

And yet what the guys on Madison Ave can't relate to is the fact that the SEC with its demographic out earned in total revenue the Big 10 by 5 million per school last year. Why? Gate, donations, concessions, merchandising, etc. So those stats don't jibe with what advertisers should want to pursue, because you are talking about niche markets with niche industries. I might also add that people who live in New York City relate better with those living in L.A. or San Francisco because they just can't grasp that the cost of living in lower Alabama or most of Florida is low enough that an income of 70,000 buys you more than an income of nearly 200,000 in one of those locations I mentioned.

Culture and commitment keep the SEC where it is. But, if the ad folks want to pursue disposable income they need to take note of just how much of it we have to be able to make up and surpass the difference in TV revenue of their Northern darlings where middle class families don't have the same disposable income that their peers in the South have.

That's how marketing frequently suffers from only looking at what's in the fishbowl they are studying, rather than in the ocean around them.