(10-18-2016 02:20 AM)JRsec Wrote: (10-18-2016 01:17 AM)HawaiiMongoose Wrote: What we'll be saying in a month: This board doesn't have nearly enough threads on a best-of-the-rest G5 conference.
And yet there is not 1 single thread addressing the reality that the networks are the ones that have precluded the promotion of G5 schools. It's not the Big 12. This begs the question, why? It should be obvious that the networks want to group the brands for maximization of content and group them in ways that draw the interest of multiple regions as often as possible.
Whether networks have a long term desire to organize conferences in any particular way, conferences
ask networks what media value would be attached to various alignments. All networks have to do is to describe the value landscape the way that they see it, and that will have a major influence on the moves that conferences make.
The case of the Big12 was a bit peculiar, with networks were not competing for and negotiating over the rights to a conference, but rather were on the hook for paying for whatever schools the conference ultimately decided to invite.
But even that was not
completely distinctive, since part of the value of Maryland and Rutgers to the Big Ten was the value of "in footprint" vs "out of footprint" carriage fees for BTN, with the concentration of cable system ownership in our country meaning that some payments would be coming on the basis of already-negotiated carriage agreements.
Quote: Consolidation is going to happen, not expansion.
The other side of this is the way that OTT streaming markets work compared to cable TV markets. For over a decade, much of the focus on OTT streaming markets is the way that they allow smaller niche markets to be served in a way that was not previously feasible. But the flip side of OTT streaming markets is that internet markets tend strongly toward exponential distributions, with "A" list sites attracting a multiple of visits vs "B" list sites, which attract a similar multiple of visits vs "C" list sites, and so on ... with lower barriers to
entry, but with the broader "tail" of the market distribution surviving on very modest revenues.
ESPN knows where it wants to be in the OTT streaming sports aggregator market, which is part of why it extended the MAC contract at a higher contract price, in part to get the MAC schools to upgrade their arenas to produce ESPN3 quality streaming BBall games to be able to have all not-otherwise-broadcast MAC home games on ESPN3.
But once that market starts maturing, and as companies have to start rely more heavily on streaming revenues as cable declines toward a new, smaller market share, and whichever media companies end up on top of the fight to be in the "A" list of OTT streaming sports aggregators ... there's no reason to expect that the number of firms in a position to compete for big money rights contracts will expand. It's more likely that it will contract.
And if a more competitive market means that the total profits that can be squeezed out of the market are smaller, a more concentrated range of companies to compete for big money rights contracts are likely to mean that the squeeze can be passed on to the conferences where the rights originate.
And in the logic of exponential market distributions, it's not the high end properties that are going to feel the squeeze. And it can't be the low end properties that feel the squeeze, because they aren't making enough now to yield any cost reduction. It will be the properties in the middle.