The Rose Bowl Network
Putting together a few ideas from the past few weeks (including
Stew Mandel’s mailbag comments about online-only network subscriptions), I’d like to propose the future of the Big Ten/Pac-12 when it comes to expansion.
With the Big 12 on shaky ground—or at the very least “the shakiest ground among P5s”—and the Pac-12 needing viable expansion targets to shore up it’s own network/footing among P5s, I propose the Texlahoma expansion finally happens. The Big Ten quickly snatches up Kansas from the chaos, and then surprisingly poaches rival Missouri from the SEC.
The two conferences—both at 16 teams—merge their networks into the Rose Bowl Network, which now spans coast to coast and includes about half of the best college sports properties in the country. Both conferences have a 49% ownership in the new network, which becomes an immediate rival for a channel like ESPN2 or FS1. The RBN gets a higher coverage fee in member states (which includes Texas, California, and New York) and is carried (more popularly than previously) nationally on sports tiers.
Now, here’s where the proposal gets good. Fans of individual teams (I’ll use PSU since that’s my team) will desire more coverage of their own team. The BTN offered a moderate amount of PSU coverage, but adding 18 teams to the channel (RBN) would dilute individual team coverage immensely. So, the RBN would offer an online-only subscription for each individual team. Profits for each individual team can be rolled into one big profit pool (which is the current model for Tier 3 in the Pac-12 and Big Ten) or given to the particular school’s coffers. (I could see this going either way, and it’s not a detail that makes-or-breaks this idea. An obvious carrot for a school like Texas is that they could still make more money than the rest of the Pac-16 if each school kept its online revenue; a school like Washington State would like to share USC and UCLA’s online revenue evenly.)
How would content be split among the RBN and RBN online channels? Tier 1 and tier 2 would still be negotiated individually by each separate league. This is not a total partnership. So, if the Big Ten can command $500 million per year (actually more, with addition of KU/MU) and the Pac-12 can just garner $400 per year, the Big Ten member schools get that windfall without sharing it with their western brethren.
The Tier 3 content—which has jumped from 14 schools worth to 32 schools worth—would overflow the boundaries of the RBN alone. If the BTN currently offers 2 to 3 games each Saturday, that number wouldn’t be able to double, even with over double the amount of schools. There simply aren’t that many TV slots on one channel. I bet they’d want 3 to 4 live games spanning from noon to 1am. This would allow for at least 2 games each week to be “online only,” and over the course of a 13-week season, that means every team would have at least one football game not televised (FOX, ESPN, ABC, RBN) without a subscription to the RBN online channel of each team.
With the infrastructure of the P12N and BTN already in place, adding new content specific to each school would not be terribly difficult. Plus, any shows on the main channel (RBN) which were relevant to a particular school could be funneled to the RBN online school-specific channels.
As a PSU fan living overseas, I’ve made use of the BTN International package. For those of you unaware, you can subscribe to the BTN online if you are living overseas for $120 per year, $20 per month, and $15 per day. Not only does this allow me to watch the 2 PSU football games each season which are aired live on BTN, but it also allows me to watch all of PSU’s past games (after 12 hours have elapsed from the original airing on ESPN/ABC—which works well for my Sunday afternoon relaxation as I am 7 hours ahead of East Coast time). I could watch other PSU sports content on-demand as well if I had the time and interest to do so.
I think the RBN conglomerate could charge more to individual schools’ fans in this set up, simply because the content would be exclusively for that school. Nine times out of ten when I skim the BTN cable channel, I flip past because there’s a show about Illinois or Rutgers airing. With a PSU channel available, I know—even if it’s not football—that I’m going to at least see a school I care about.
Granted, not all alums and fans will feel compelled to order the channel, but I believe that this niche will hit a major consumer sweet spot—making money for the schools and providing many alums/fans a viewing option that they would clamor for.
RBN would be available on cable only, for as long as the cable subscription model held out. The only way to get the majority of your Pac-12/Big Ten content would be to have the RBN and the channels like ESPN and FOX. The major vehicle for the big dollars is still the network TV deals.
To anticipate the “next big thing,” you have to be willing to think big and think differently. A “bigger” channel (the Rose Bowl Network) and more popular, school-centric channels are a way to maximize revenue and provide coverage for fans.
(I haven’t discussed the SEC, ACC, or their networks in this. I do feel like they would be forced to expand as well. I do not feel like they would have bargaining power over the Big Ten or the Pac-12 in this expansion scenario; the money of this semi-merger would simply be too large (and the academic respect would also be appealing). The ACC Network might already be pioneering an online-only model itself, and ESPN wouldn’t struggle to patch together decent school-focused online offerings for the SEC if the model succeeded for RBN. I'm not suggesting abject failure and collapse for those conferences; they'll adapt and do just fine. I just think the Big Ten/Pac-12 could get ahead of them with this approach.)