(01-17-2013 10:58 AM)Attackcoog Wrote: Think small packages designed to fill niches. That's the strategy to use. Split the package. If ESPN bought the whole football package for say 40 million, it costs them an awful lot of money for alot the programming they will never broadcast. Say they only need 20% of the nBE programming because they don't have enough slots to show it all.
The problem is, they barely "need" any. 20% of $40M is $8M. Bump it up a little to $15M. And that's for the 10 or so best Aresco League games.
Quote: By doing this to multiple carriers, the nBE actually cuts programming costs for each network while increasing the total value of thier package.
The problem is the same one the MWC has. The first picker gets the best games, which de-values what everybody else gets.
Quote:But, working out individual deals and dividing the rights packages into the right combination of packages to the right combination of networks in just the right way to generate the highest total value possible could take time...and might create a situation where you have no approximate value for the total package until the process is nearly complete.
And I'm saying the money might not be there at all. I was doing estimates based on three packages. I figured they'd have roughly equal value, $10-15-20M each.
1. A game-of-the-week on national cable (ESPN/2/FoxSports1)
2. A buttload of crappy games for a lousy network looking to fill airtime. (NBC-SN, CBS-SN, FSN, ESPN-U and 3 and syndication)
3. And a string of local packages (CSN Houston, TV stations in North Carolina, SportsNet New York) where the local station is getting everything but the game-of-the-week instead of just leftovers.
I'm wondering if the $10-$15-$20M just isn't there anywhere for the game-of-the-week package, especially without Boise State.
FoxSports1, for example. They have some spots projected. They could just fill those games with C-USA stuff that they bought in 2011. But I don't think they want to show FIU-Charlotte, ODU-Marshall, UNT-Louisiana Tech week after week. Even if the ratings were better, it makes the network look small time. Well, outside Florida and North Carolina, does ECU-UCF look that different than FIU-Charlotte? ODU-Marshall vs Temple-Navy? SMU-Tulane vs UNT-LT?
Maybe Fox bumps a couple of games up from C-USA games up from FSN to FoxSports1. Maybe they'd bump a few Aresco LEague games up from FSN to FS1. But not enough to buy it as a separate package.
ESPN could buy the game-of-the-week package. Or they could just fill those slots with MAC or Sun Belt games and tell America it's just as good.
What was supposed to be the Big East advantage, going last, could be turning into a disadvantage. You're selling in a market where the buyers have pretty much already bought up what they need.