How different would conferences look today
IF only TV markets were taken into consideration?
US TV Households by Market
103 Greenville-New Bern-Washington, NC
106 Tallahassee, FL-Thomasville, GA
137 Columbia-Jefferson City, MO
143 Lubbock, TX
160 Gainesville, FL
183 Charlottesville, VA
191 Lafayette, IN
There's more, but you're smart & get my point...
So is it TV markets? Brand name? Home attendance? Fan travel to away games & bowls? Budget? Uniforms? Colors? What is the criteria
TODAY?
...
National TV appeal is #1. Home attendance tends to be a relatively good predictor though there are exceptions (see the good Miami teams).
(06-12-2010 09:29 AM)arkstfan Wrote: [ -> ]National TV appeal is #1. Home attendance tends to be a relatively good predictor though there are exceptions (see the good Miami teams).
How do you project who has national appeal? Games on ESPN? TV share of games aired? Ouiji boards? Would 1M watchers nationwide beat 1.2M watchers in a region? What're the rules,
today?
1.2 million regional viewers is 1.2 million viewers in the national picture.
I don't know of a ready easy source for numbers but a good clue would be the number of ABC, NBC, CBS appearances with the caveat that that some games just end up there (ie. Navy at Notre Dame) and the second clue would be ESPN and ESPN SATURDAY appearances. Off-Saturday appearances often have more to do with the lack of schools willing to cooperate with non-standard appearances.
(06-12-2010 10:56 AM)arkstfan Wrote: [ -> ]1.2 million regional viewers is 1.2 million viewers in the national picture.
I don't know of a ready easy source for numbers but a good clue would be the number of ABC, NBC, CBS appearances with the caveat that that some games just end up there (ie. Navy at Notre Dame) and the second clue would be ESPN and ESPN SATURDAY appearances. Off-Saturday appearances often have more to do with the lack of schools willing to cooperate with non-standard appearances.
Would if one of the number/stat geeks could put together some kind of weighted something or another?...
(06-12-2010 09:29 AM)arkstfan Wrote: [ -> ]National TV appeal is #1. Home attendance tends to be a relatively good predictor though there are exceptions (see the good Miami teams).
The key is not TV market size, as many major state universities are located in secondary cities. It is the size of the state, and the level of interest in that school in that state. National interest is also important, but will not deliver paying cable subscribers. National interest translates well for national networks, but this is of declining importance in the college sports business model.
Quick example - Maryland. UMD is located in the Washington DC television market, but it does not deliver the entire market. More than half of the DC market is in Virginia and DC. Maryland probably delivers the State of Maryland, which includes parts of several television markets. State population is a better metric for the potential television value than the TV market in which the school is located.
It's a combination as noted above. Several large state schools are in small college towns that have small TV HH #s - very small TV markets as was listed above.
Many of these schools have large alum populations in their state's bigger markets as well as general football fans of a state school team so the games are covered in those tv markets.
(06-12-2010 12:17 PM)joep1 Wrote: [ -> ]It's a combination as noted above. Several large state schools are in small college towns that have small TV HH #s - very small TV markets as was listed above.
Many of these schools have large alum populations in their state's bigger markets as well as general football fans of a state school team so the games are covered in those tv markets.
How do you accurately measure that? IF you have a large number of alums in an area and they don't care or watch, what difference do they actually make? ECU has been told all along that our large (several thousand) alumni in Raleigh, Charlotte & Tidewater Virginia don't matter. This is all so nebulous...
The new game involves getting a conference TV network and getting on cable for an area. The Big Ten was able to do this and they get $0.70 per subscriber per month and they are not all fans. They just force it on you and you end up getting it with the cable package that you choose. I have hundreds of channels of TV that I could care less about watching, except the cable company bundled all of these channels with the 2 channels that I really wanted. That's why there is a big rush to get into areas with a lot of people. For a state like New York there are 20 million people. If you multiply $0.70 times 20 million then that works out to $14 million per month. Now not everybody will subscribe but even if only a half do then that's still $7 million per month. That would pay a lot of bills for the universities.
Let's use common sense, NC (after the the 2010 census) will have over 10 mil & is projected to by-pass Ohio in 10 years as the 7th largest state. ECU is the 3rd largest school in NC & the only true FBS Football school in the state. Kansas has less than 3 mil & Iowa a little more that 3 mil with both losing people in the next 10 yrs. WV has less than 2 mil. With a BcS label ECU could easily bring as many TV viewers as any of those states. And remember ECU has a huge following in the Tidewater area of Va. & Maryland according to MASN.
Quick thoughts about tv markets and ratings and all that jazz.....
The overnight ratings that come out.....the ones that came out that recapped the entire bowl season........they applied to the top 56 US markets only. That's it.....the 56 biggest US markets......so this idea about "national appeal" is silly......we're talking about 56 US markets, where Neilsen does over night fast national ratings. Plus.....it was simply an average rating of 56 US markets......so........for example UCF/Rutgers may have done a huge rating in Orlando and Philly/NYC.....but, done terribly n Chicago and LA and Dallas and Houston.
Outside of Ohio State/Michigan and Army/Navy and Florida State/Miami to kick off the season.......everything else.....all other matchups are regional......whether they are in state rivalries.....or other......college football and rivalries are regional in nature.
As posted above....once you start getting into building an actual conference network.....where the numbers of actual tv households in a certain geographic area come into play to help calculate subscriber fee revenue....then local markets and size of local markets become important......and that's where a school's fan base comes into play...questions such as: how passionate is one's fan base?......what parts of the state/region is it prominent? Is the area/region/state growing or shrinking? those sorts of things.......
TV markets for college sports are overrated.
(06-12-2010 02:26 PM)whitey Wrote: [ -> ]Let's use common sense, NC (after the the 2010 census) will have over 10 mil & is projected to by-pass Ohio in 10 years as the 7th largest state. ECU is the 3rd largest school in NC & the only true FBS Football school in the state. Kansas has less than 3 mil & Iowa a little more that 3 mil with both losing people in the next 10 yrs. WV has less than 2 mil. With a BcS label ECU could easily bring as many TV viewers as any of those states. And remember ECU has a huge following in the Tidewater area of Va. & Maryland according to MASN.
Just for clarification....ECU is the 2nd largest in undergrads..behing NCSU as of this year. In fact...the 3 schools are less that 3000 apart total.
(06-12-2010 11:17 PM)Sandiss Wrote: [ -> ]TV markets for college sports are overrated.
6 months ago="we want teams with bigger markets. Greenville isnt a decent market"
today="markets are overrated"
Jeez, would you BCS fools just make up your minds?
(06-12-2010 08:44 AM)Den Wrote: [ -> ]How different would conferences look today IF only TV markets were taken into consideration?
US TV Households by Market
103 Greenville-New Bern-Washington, NC
106 Tallahassee, FL-Thomasville, GA
137 Columbia-Jefferson City, MO
143 Lubbock, TX
160 Gainesville, FL
183 Charlottesville, VA
191 Lafayette, IN
There's more, but you're smart & get my point...
Surely you understand the difference between a regional brand with limited appeal and the market the brand is located in? I ask because apparently many Big East fans don't comprehend this subject either.
(06-12-2010 02:26 PM)whitey Wrote: [ -> ]Let's use common sense, NC (after the the 2010 census) will have over 10 mil & is projected to by-pass Ohio in 10 years as the 7th largest state. ECU is the 3rd largest school in NC & the only true FBS Football school in the state. Kansas has less than 3 mil & Iowa a little more that 3 mil with both losing people in the next 10 yrs. WV has less than 2 mil. With a BcS label ECU could easily bring as many TV viewers as any of those states. And remember ECU has a huge following in the Tidewater area of Va. & Maryland according to MASN.
But Kansas draws 10,000 more people per game.
Kansas drew 52,530 for Northern Colorado, the least attractive game on their schedule. ECU drew 43,569 for Va Tech, most attractive game on their schedule.
While ECU is "the only true FBS school in the state", both UNC and NC State averaged about 15,000 more per game. If the fans are so fickle that BCS status is worth 10,000 more then it still places ECU 5,000 behind fake FBS programs like UNC and NC State.
(06-13-2010 02:00 AM)arkstfan Wrote: [ -> ] (06-12-2010 02:26 PM)whitey Wrote: [ -> ]Let's use common sense, NC (after the the 2010 census) will have over 10 mil & is projected to by-pass Ohio in 10 years as the 7th largest state. ECU is the 3rd largest school in NC & the only true FBS Football school in the state. Kansas has less than 3 mil & Iowa a little more that 3 mil with both losing people in the next 10 yrs. WV has less than 2 mil. With a BcS label ECU could easily bring as many TV viewers as any of those states. And remember ECU has a huge following in the Tidewater area of Va. & Maryland according to MASN.
But Kansas draws 10,000 more people per game.
Kansas drew 52,530 for Northern Colorado, the least attractive game on their schedule. ECU drew 43,569 for Va Tech, most attractive game on their schedule.
While ECU is "the only true FBS school in the state", both UNC and NC State averaged about 15,000 more per game. If the fans are so fickle that BCS status is worth 10,000 more then it still places ECU 5,000 behind fake FBS programs like UNC and NC State.
ECU has a 43500 seat stadium & next year expanding to 50,000 without a BcS label. Only 2 non-AQ schools do better, BYU & Utah. With AQ after their name would easily put 60,000 there.