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https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/...7c13799c19

Clearly FS1/2 stay with fox along with Fox News and business, but ESPN acquiring Oklahoma ‘s Tier 3 rights via this method could prove valuable when realignment negotiations take place years from now.
That Forbes link wouldn't work for me. Actually, when I started searching for Forbes, I couldn't get the site itself to work either. Not sure if anyone else is having that problem, but I found this one from CNBC...

Disney-Fox deal to include RSNs

Quote:With the play to get the RSNs though, Disney is telegraphing that it is going to have the key sports you care about -- nationally and locally -- for a long time. If you want those games, you need to visit the Magic Kingdom, whether as a cable subscriber, an OTT subscriber, or both.

Now all of this is incredibly fascinating.

-According to Wikipedia, there are 21 of these RSNs.
-The Big Ten Network does not appear to be included in this designation
-YES Network is, however, and part of Fox's plan to get the BTN into the NYC metro area was to piggyback it on YES...if this deal goes through then is Fox's share of the BTN far behind in the not too distant future?
-Has the ACC Network technically been created yet? Because it would make a lot of sense to use one of these feeds as the basis for an ACCN rather than creating a new channel.
There's an awful lot to digest here, but I have a few initial reactions.

1. If ESPN buys a system of RSNs then obviously their content is going to grow massively. The NBA, MLB, NHL, and MLS all use these platforms extensively.

2. We've been talking for a while now about how we thought Disney/ESPN might start making a play for more rights in order to really make a splash and pump up the value of their OTT service. Did any of us really expect that move to be this massive though? I didn't.

3. I mentioned how this might affect the distribution of an ACC Network. Is it possible the same approach could be used for a Big 12 Network? Add BYU and another decent school to the lineup and convert one of these feeds into another conference network? Compensate by converting the LHN into a more standard RSN?

4. I suppose now that we'll see SEC and other college content, more obscure content, on some of these regional networks. They'll need to fill air time after all and ESPN is in a much better position to fill air time with college content than FOX was.
I also think the content on all these RSN’s could be optimized for streaming as the online viewer can watch the latest local episode of that show at anytime while the provider doesn’t have to fill all that dead space with infomercials.
(12-06-2017 04:44 AM)AllTideUp Wrote: [ -> ]That Forbes link wouldn't work for me. Actually, when I started searching for Forbes, I couldn't get the site itself to work either. Not sure if anyone else is having that problem, but I found this one from CNBC...

Disney-Fox deal to include RSNs

Quote:With the play to get the RSNs though, Disney is telegraphing that it is going to have the key sports you care about -- nationally and locally -- for a long time. If you want those games, you need to visit the Magic Kingdom, whether as a cable subscriber, an OTT subscriber, or both.

Now all of this is incredibly fascinating.

-According to Wikipedia, there are 21 of these RSNs.
-The Big Ten Network does not appear to be included in this designation
-YES Network is, however, and part of Fox's plan to get the BTN into the NYC metro area was to piggyback it on YES...if this deal goes through then is Fox's share of the BTN far behind in the not too distant future?
-Has the ACC Network technically been created yet? Because it would make a lot of sense to use one of these feeds as the basis for an ACCN rather than creating a new channel.

The BTN will be up for bids in about 10 years.
There are two main competitors for college football sports ESPN & FOX. FOX also competes against ESPN to a lesser degree in college basketball.

If your strong competitors I think you want to think twice about selling a lot of content to your biggest competition. Unless, could this be a signal that there could possibly be a future movement in college football to come up with a consolidated P5 of somewhere between 64 to 72 teams where the Power conference teams negotiate their contract as one entity like the NFL? Do ESPN and FOX realize they can't use all that content and want to work in unison splitting the content?
(12-07-2017 01:39 AM)Win5002 Wrote: [ -> ]There are two main competitors for college football sports ESPN & FOX. FOX also competes against ESPN to a lesser degree in college basketball.

If your strong competitors I think you want to think twice about selling a lot of content to your biggest competition. Unless, could this be a signal that there could possibly be a future movement in college football to come up with a consolidated P5 of somewhere between 64 to 72 teams where the Power conference teams negotiate their contract as one entity like the NFL? Do ESPN and FOX realize they can't use all that content and want to work in unison splitting the content?

That would be really nice to simply move to a P4. That too solves the playoff issue quite concisely.

The question is how to divide and who to divide. It will be fascinating to see what unfolds. But it is a very serendipitous (or very calculated) move for ESPN and I'm not a believer in dumb luck so there is definitely some intentionality at work here.
I'm sure there's some consideration here over the future of college athletics and its properties, but the scope of this acquisition would be pretty huge.

Lots of pro content on the table as well. That and I think it's maybe more about distribution and providing a slam dunk OTT service.

If this happens then ESPN will still have competitors, but none of them will be particularly significant in size.
We are all focusing about what does this mean for college athletics but there is a lot more professional content than college, maybe the college part of this acquisition was a minor point of the purchase.
(12-07-2017 04:44 PM)Win5002 Wrote: [ -> ]We are all focusing about what does this mean for college athletics but there is a lot more professional content than college, maybe the college part of this acquisition was a minor point of the purchase.

I do think the college content is important and this actually gives ESPN by far the best platform to showcase it. All that pro content is important as well.

All in all, I think this is ESPN's attempt at taking over sports broadcasting in the USA in one fell swoop.
Here's another angle as it pertains to college content...

One of the primary reasons the PAC set their network up the way they did was to be able to provide regional content across the footprint. They kind of screwed it up, but it's not a totally worthless endeavor.

If FOX is in 'sell' mode and ESPN is in 'buy' mode then it could very well work out something like this:

ESPN buys the PAC Networks and trims it down to one national channel that is much more likely to be successful. If ESPN uses this RSN system to showcase all those minor sports from the PAC locally then the PAC gets the best of both worlds. I could very easily see the PAC selling their entire rights package to ESPN and forgetting FOX.
(12-07-2017 04:51 PM)AllTideUp Wrote: [ -> ]Here's another angle as it pertains to college content...

One of the primary reasons the PAC set their network up the way they did was to be able to provide regional content across the footprint. They kind of screwed it up, but it's not a totally worthless endeavor.

If FOX is in 'sell' mode and ESPN is in 'buy' mode then it could very well work out something like this:

ESPN buys the PAC Networks and trims it down to one national channel that is much more likely to be successful. If ESPN uses this RSN system to showcase all those minor sports from the PAC locally then the PAC gets the best of both worlds. I could very easily see the PAC selling their entire rights package to ESPN and forgetting FOX.

PAC Networks are wholly owned by PAC. Convincing the PAC schools to sell a percentage to ESPN or Fox to help get carriage is possible as a few University Presidents are not happy they are falling behind financially other conference network earnings.

I still think putting the PAC under the ESPN umbrella would be its best shot at optimized revenues.
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