What do you all think? Is its launch schedule at least ready to be announced?

I understand a full analysis to see how current setup looks and then slotting in new markets/schools along the way. Also I really hope the semi split into two separate independent divisions are still on the table.. if ever at all.

(06-17-2010 10:32 AM)dgrace4cards Wrote:  What do you all think? Is its launch schedule at least ready to be announced?

I understand a full analysis to see how current setup looks and then slotting in new markets/schools along the way. Also I really hope the semi split into two separate independent divisions are still on the table.. if ever at all.

It appears that the network is being investigated.

Whether or not any announcements come out about it, I don't know. I'm not sure how that may effect current TV contracts that (I think) expire in 3 years. If there's any negative ramifications with current TV deals from announcing something now, then I would say there wouldn't be any public announcement about this.

(06-17-2010 10:32 AM)dgrace4cards Wrote:  What do you all think? Is its launch schedule at least ready to be announced?

I understand a full analysis to see how current setup looks and then slotting in new markets/schools along the way. Also I really hope the semi split into two separate independent divisions are still on the table.. if ever at all.

It appears that the network is being investigated.

Whether or not any announcements come out about it, I don't know. I'm not sure how that may effect current TV contracts that (I think) expire in 3 years. If there's any negative ramifications with current TV deals from announcing something now, then I would say there wouldn't be any public announcement about this.

From what is out there, Tagliabue and Marinatto have said they are interested and looking into it. They've also said there are existing contracts which there are. They may not be able to form a network until the current contracts are up. They don't have a broadcast partner for one to date (i.e. Fox), they don't have anyone to handle production, they don't have offices, studios, any of that yet. It will be a few years down the road before such a network could be up and running--there will also be issues with the providers and working out deals with them to get the maximum revenues possible. All of this goes to show you that the thread on inside rumors about what it really going on has at least some false information--you can't have already negotiated with cable companies and you haven't even barely begun to set up your actual network.

This is the time to talk and do it, if ever. 3 years out, plenty of time to get things in place if you decide before the end of the year.

The difficulty of B.E.N is how you divide the revenue. Should PC get as much as everyone else basketball wise when they don’t have the market or contribute on the floor. It’s hard enough with football and basketball but you talk about TV ad revenue and teams in big markets but really don’t draw interest by their lack of competiveness.

(06-17-2010 02:23 PM)SO#1 Wrote:  The difficulty of B.E.N is how you divide the revenue. Should PC get as much as everyone else basketball wise when they don’t have the market or contribute on the floor. It’s hard enough with football and basketball but you talk about TV ad revenue and teams in big markets but really don’t draw interest by their lack of completeness.

Football schools get 2 shares, basketball 1. Just my opinion...

Big East Network will not be announced until the Big East concludes its TV negotiations and determines that ESPN will not pay them enough to not start it.

I would be shocked, but I've been shocked by a lot of things over the past couple of weeks. I say no simply because I think it would be too difficult to get off the ground at the current time. The economy is much worse than when the Big Ten did it, the northeast will probably be harder to crack than the midwest and the membership is still at least somewhat questionable which is going to make it more difficult to get on at a decent rate. I'm not saying it couldn't work, but it would be difficult and take time and not be a guarantee. I think using a potential one as leverage is the best bet still.

(06-17-2010 02:29 PM)mlb Wrote:  Football schools get 2 shares, basketball 1. Just my opinion...

You can’t do that because BE basketball and football don’t have equal weight. For schools that contribute zero to football should get zero. You get much, much more ad dollars in large market than small one. But if your school not responsible for the drawing interest, why should you be compensated even if you are in that market.

Look at the B10... they do it equally. I expect the Big East to do the same.

Otherwise they could base it on how you finish in conference, like the current deal. I just don't see that being the final deal.

(06-17-2010 02:44 PM)mlb Wrote:  Look at the B10... they do it equally. I expect the Big East to do the same.

Otherwise they could base it on how you finish in conference, like the current deal. I just don't see that being the final deal.

Doesn't the Big Ten have the conference own 51% of the BTN, and then the BTN contracts with the conference to cover the sports? If so, under a BEN, the FB schools will get all of the revenue from the FB contract between the Big East and the BEN, the basketball contract will be split among all teams, the lacrosse contract will be split among the lacrosse schools, the baseball contract among the baseball schools, etc. So no school would be benefitting from a sport they don't support in terms of actual television contract dollars, but the network investment and the return on such investment could still be equal among all conference members.

And yet another reason the hybrid is dragging the conference down. Can't even put together a fair tv revenue package for both sides.

(06-17-2010 02:44 PM)mlb Wrote:  Look at the B10... they do it equally. I expect the Big East to do the same.

Otherwise they could base it on how you finish in conference, like the current deal. I just don't see that being the final deal.

Some of our members sponsor minimum sports to be classify as Division I but other sponsor over 20 sports. Do those sponsor more that provide the contents compensated more or as much those did less?

(06-17-2010 10:10 PM)SO#1 Wrote:  Some of our members sponsor minimum sports to be classify as Division I but other sponsor over 20 sports. Do those sponsor more that provide the contents compensated more or as much those did less?

I believe there would be 2 aspects to a possible BEN. First is ownership. As an example, were all 16 schools to kick in $3 million each to start the network (it would obviously be less if there was a partnership with Fox or Comcast), regardless of number of sports the school sponsors, then the ownership of the BEN would be equal. If the investment is disproportionate, then the ownership is disproportionate.

The second aspect is the Big East's contract with the BEN in each sport. The assuming a sport is televised on the BEN, then only those schools participating in such sport should benefit fron the contract. So only 8 benefit from the revenue from the contract between the BE and BEN for FB, all for basketball, some for lacrosse, some for volleyball, some for softball, etc.

So, in a long winded answer to your question (sorry), the more televised sports a school sponsors, the more revenue the school would draw from the BE's various contracts with the BEN. However, the annual return on investment would depend on the school's ownership stake in the BEN.

The Big East will do nothing.

They will sit like terrified little bunnies until the end comes.

(06-17-2010 09:37 PM)dgrace4cards Wrote:  And yet another reason the hybrid is dragging the conference down. Can't even put together a fair tv revenue package for both sides.

And do you really think without the BB schools, New York, Philly and DC market will give you

a.) enough content if you expand with 12 teams
b.) increase value with ECU, UCF, Memphis, ______

I don't understand how its BB school's fault when there is NO report about revenue sharing yet. It's just the OP(you) asking a question and putting blame on BB schools about revenue sharing.

You see this as BB schools dragging you, then why did you even join the conference if you knew about this hybrid. You could've waited for big12 to call instead you took what was available.

BTW, your President and AD supports the hybrid because the value of Big East is the hybrid.

I could understand if BB schools said no to any expansion but so far media reports says the opposite. So far, BB school is all for expansion or enough votes for it... its just that the conference as a whole doesn't know who to pick. They all have their favorites. If this was the 4 big12 schools, I bet every school vote in favor of adding them. But because they are non-BCS schools, they do have their faults and not a huge national name.

(06-17-2010 02:41 PM)SO#1 Wrote:  

(06-17-2010 02:29 PM)mlb Wrote:  Football schools get 2 shares, basketball 1. Just my opinion...

You can’t do that because BE basketball and football don’t have equal weight. For schools that contribute zero to football should get zero. You get much, much more ad dollars in large market than small one. But if your school not responsible for the drawing interest, why should you be compensated even if you are in that market.

...okay, then schools that play hockey should get 1 too, except schools that play hockey but bite the big wiener shouldn't get any.

I don't give a crap what they do but they need to get TV money to around at least $15M per football school to be in the neighborhood of other BCS conferences. They better get their butt on that cause anything less will not help to stabilize the conference. The current payout is simply not acceptable. They are way underpaid and undervalued in both basketball and football comparing to other BCS conferences, especially the ACC.

Comcast is HQ in Philadelphia. Its Versus studios are shared by the YES network in Stamford, Ct. Comcast thru SNY already is a part of the present convoluted BE football distribution structure.

The BE is uniquely positioned both physically (ESPN is HQ in BE footprint as well as Comcast) and in terms of its business relationships to move slowly and allow Comcast and ESPN to fight it out with each other over a BE network. I have said this several times on the BE board related to the Comcast NBC merger and in PMs to people here -please read the last line in the article below (article is about prospective PAC10 network but the comments related to creating a bidding war apply to BE as well)...Comcast cannot be a player until Congress approves this merger.

ESPN was proactive in acting with the Big12 before Comcast could do anything - there is no need for the BE to move now - there are too many variables at play and the biggest chunk of money comes from Distribution (subscription fees - ie Providers) not the Network advertising as the article below states yet again.


Will more teams lead to more TV money for Pac-10?
Josh Dubow
Pac-10 expansion appears complete with the addition of Colorado and an invitation to Utah to be the league's 12th member.

The question remains whether commissioner Larry Scott achieved his goal of adding schools that provided "exponential" growth in revenues and exposure for the conference.

Scott shot big by going after Texas, Oklahoma and three other Big 12 schools that eventually turned him down. The conference settled for expanding into the Mountain time zone, but couldn't crack the lucrative Texas market.

The verdict on how successful Scott's plan was won't come until the conference negotiates its new television deals next year, which could include the creation of its own network to rival the Big Ten's.

"I can't say sitting here today that we will have a TV network of our own, but I can say there is significant interest in it and we are in the process of developing a business plan for it," he said Wednesday.

But it won't be nearly as lucrative without Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State in the conference. A 16-team conference with those schools and Colorado would have expanded the Pac-10's footprint into seven states that have about 31 million television homes and 10 of the top 30 TV markets, according to the 2009-10 figures from Nielsen Co.

By only adding Colorado and Utah, the conference will see its penetration fall from 26.7 percent of the country to just 19 percent — a loss of 9.1 million of TV homes.

"Adding the state of Texas would have added a lot of TV homes," said Neal Pilson, president of the Pilson Communications media consulting firm and a former president of CBS Sports. "But they still have close to 20 percent of the country. A conference channel is still going to be researched and examined. They could probably make it work in those markets."

The difference in homes becomes stark when it comes to a conference network, where the biggest source of revenue is from subscribers of cable and satellite providers.

Analyst Derek Baine of the research firm SNL Kagan said the Big Ten gets 88 cents per subscriber each month in market, compared to 5 cents out of market. The loss of a potential 9.1 million TV homes a month starts to add up quickly.

Scott said the conference has explored the possibility of a network with different teams and different numbers of teams. It hired the Creative Arts Agency to help determine how much money it can make under different plans. The Pac-10 pays out the least of any of the six BCS conferences, with the latest figures showing Stanford getting less than $7 million and Southern California receiving about $11.5 million.

The conference should increase those figures whether it starts its own network or does a traditional media deal. Scott has said he will be more flexible with scheduling and other matters in order to garner higher payouts from TV partners.

The question now is whether the Pac-10 can get more per school with 12 universities than it would have with 10. A football championship game should provide an additional $10 million to $15 million in revenues. It's not yet clear how much more the addition of the 16th largest market in Denver and the 31st largest in Salt Lake City will add.

Starting a cable network is a difficult process with high upfront costs involved and difficult fights with cable and satellite providers to get on basic packages instead of special sports tiers that reduce the number of subscribers and revenue drastically.

The Big Ten has successfully pulled off the feat, having launched a network in 2007 that plays a big role in the approximately $20 million payouts to each conference team — the most of any conference.

"The Big Ten spent many years pre-launch trying to get deals in place with operators," Baine said. "Sports rights are very expensive. The cable operators are not really into adding new expensive programming. It's not something that can happen overnight. You have to work years on it."

The Big Ten went into partnership with Fox, which owns 49 percent of the network. With Fox's parent company News Corp. also owning a stake in DirecTV at the time, the conference was able to quickly do a deal with the satellite provider, helping make it the first cable network to reach 30 million subscribers within its first 30 days on the air.

By its second season, the network reached deals with all of the major cable providers, making it a success that other conferences wanted to equal.

"You'd have to ask them," Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany said when asked this week about the impact of his network. "All I know is we've been very happy with the creative and financial aspects of our network."

With News Corp. no longer owning a stake of DirecTV, a deal with Fox would not give the Pac-10 an automatic carriage agreement with a major provider.

The conference could leverage the possibility of a network into more rights fees as the SEC did in its latest deal with ESPN.

ESPN, Fox and Comcast all could be viable bidders by next season. Comcast's deal to take over NBC Universal is expected to be approved by regulators before the end of the year.

That will add another potential bidder for the conference's rights — most notably one that will control a broadcast network in NBC, a sports cable network in Versus, regional sports networks in California and Oregon and is also the nation's largest cable TV provider.

Baine said Comcast is staying quiet now to avoid raising the ire of regulators but could be a major player as soon as the deal is approved.

___

AP College Football Writer Ralph Russo in New York contributed to this report.