(07-29-2017 12:07 PM)megadrone Wrote:  

(07-29-2017 12:31 AM)nzmorange Wrote:  You don't. It's meaningless.

You determine the size of their fan base, the size of the population that watches them in hopes that they lose, and the size of th epopulation that's willing to watch them due to their quality of play (i.e. people that just want a good game).

It probably only matters for the regional games.

Quality of the teams is probably the driving metric, even in a lopsided game. Alabama vs its FCS opponent will draw better than USF - Stony Brook, even for part of the game.

Size of the market the school is located in is probably an opening point in negotiations because you have to start somewhere or you are looking at potential numbers. Rutgers/BC/Temple will all have more potential viewers than WVU because they are located in bigger markets. Whether those are realized viewers is a different question.

Alabama, Miami, etc. all have national draw so market size doesn't matter.

WVU's viewers are scattered across the mid-Atlantic, South and to some extent the mid-West like buckshot.

(08-01-2017 08:47 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  If I'm selling ads for college football broadcasts Birmingham and New York City have identical value.
If I'm selling ads for NBA basketball, New York is going to be more valuable than Birmingham by a wide margin.
If I'm selling ads for "Beat Shazam", New York is going to be more valuable.

But if I'm in the college football business, I don't really care what the ad market is for NBA basketball.

Birmingham and NYC don't have equal value in anything. I'm not buying it. It's not like hockey where it's super disproportionately more popular in Canada than here. Football is big in New Jersey. That alone would seem to assure that NYC/NJ has more value.

(08-01-2017 12:27 PM)_C2_ Wrote:  

(08-01-2017 08:47 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  If I'm selling ads for college football broadcasts Birmingham and New York City have identical value.
If I'm selling ads for NBA basketball, New York is going to be more valuable than Birmingham by a wide margin.
If I'm selling ads for "Beat Shazam", New York is going to be more valuable.

But if I'm in the college football business, I don't really care what the ad market is for NBA basketball.

Birmingham and NYC don't have equal value in anything. I'm not buying it. It's not like hockey where it's super disproportionately more popular in Canada than here. Football is big in New Jersey. That alone would seem to assure that NYC/NJ has more value.

This isn't hard.
The number of viewers for college football in the NYC television market is virtually identical to the number of viewers in the Birmingham market.

You want to talk viewers for MLB, NBA, Big Bang Theory, NYC is more valuable but the NYC TV market does not tune into college football with the intensity in other areas.

I can buy that last line but I'm not buying that NYC is as valuable as Birmingham.

You can apply the same thinking about a college's incremental and base market to an individual "census market." Birmingham has a very high base relative to the city size, NYC is low but has some incremental potential. Unfortunately Rutgers has never tapped that so it's stayed a pro sports town, but theoretically if a school like Columbia heavily invested in sports decades ago instead of going with the Ivy League they could've been similar to USC today.

The entire market size matters theory is dumb because it's a proxy for something that's easier to measure than the proxy. Additionally, the theories that schools in big cities are better at attracting fans/viewers than schools on farms is clearly wrong, as there isn't even a positive coorelation between a school's local market and its media value.

And the theory that schools in cities have the potential to attract fans quickly because people like rooting for winning schools near them is somewhere between wrong and misleading. It ignores the fact that there's way more competition for fans/eyeballs in big cities than rural areas. The implication of that is two fold:
*I can't quantify this, but people in rural areas see distance differently when it comes to creating emotional bonds. I've seen people in NYC talk about Brooklyn like it's another country. I've also seen people in Syracuse talk about NYC, Buffalo,and Albany like they're the next town over. Do you really think the average college sports fan in Nebraska cares that the U of Nebraska is in Lincoln vs. their town? I doubt it. They care that the Huskers are in Nebraska. Heck, a lot of Nebraska fans are probably just happy the U of Nebraska is near the state of Nebraska.
*Even if big city schools could grab a lot of fans quicker than small town schools, the point is still moot because of the inverse. Their competition can also grab those fans quickly, and there's a lot more competition. Look at Rutgers. They have to compete w/ 11 major sports teams in the NYC are, PLUS a number of college teams, PLUS everything else that NYC has to offer. How often are all 11 of those teams bad at the same time?

In the end, markets overwhelmingly do not matter, which is why there are a ton of city schools getting paid peanuts for media rights, and a ton of glorified cow farms raking in millions. It would be one thing if this was 1895 and telecommunications technology was so primitive that the only game available at a given point in time was the one in walking distance. But that isn't the case anymore. Markets do not matter. Fans matter, and it doesn't make sense to use a local market as a proxy to measure them when there are far more direct methods available.

Determining a college team's market is like applying the Supreme Court's definition of determining what's pornography versus what's art: you know it when you see it.

For example, I know that the market for Texas and Texas A&M is the entire state of Texas and not just their local immediate markets. There are factors that play in to this (e.g. flagship or flagship-equivalent status, where alumni end up living, fan base size, etc.), but the overall point is that you pretty much *know* that those schools carry the entire state, whereas a school like TCU can only really claim its immediate Dallas-Fort Worth market, and G5 schools in the state of Texas outside of maybe Houston and SMU can't even really claim their own home markets. Saying that UT only delivers the Austin market because of its location is much too restrictive compared to reality, while saying that North Texas can deliver the Dallas-Fort Worth market is much too expansive compared to reality.

To be sure, markets absolutely matter with respect to conference realignment. (Whether markets ought to matter outside of that scope is a different issue, but this is a realignment board.) To say that they don't matter is a complete disregard of everything that has occurred since the ACC first raided the Big East in 2003 and the subsequent realignment moves thereafter. Who did the ACC originally want back then in addition to Miami? Boston College and Syracuse... and it was explicitly because of TV markets (and remember that there weren't even conference networks back then). Syracuse ended up locked out due to Virginia politicians effectively forcing UVA to get Virginia Tech into the league. Now, 3 of the 5 P5 conferences have conference networks and a 4th is going to launch one shortly, and the success of those networks are highly dependent upon their respective markets. As a result, when 4 of the 5 P5 leagues have networks and the 5th one (the Big 12) doesn't have one because it has a single school that can command its very own network due to the size of its home market (Texas), it's pretty clear to me that markets pretty much drive this discussion. People might not personally like it and wish that it were different, but that doesn't mean that it isn't true.

Sure, there are examples like Nebraska and Alabama that have national brand names while being located in smaller population states. There are always going to be exceptions to the general rule. However, when you're looking at the list of other marquee football powers, they're generally delivering large states and multiple large TV markets: Texas, Florida, Florida State, Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, USC, et. al. Notre Dame's value isn't in South Bend, but rather that it delivers nearby Chicago and a wide national fan base overall. These are schools that generally *do* have very large markets, only it's a school like Florida delivering its entire state as opposed to only Gainesville. That's reflected in how they're valued in the marketplace. Once again, schools like Alabama and Nebraska certainly have national brand names and that can trump the relative lack of a local market (similar to the Green Bay Packers in the NFL), but the most valuable brands in college football are mostly large market brands.

Also, I think the lack of college football fandom in NYC is coloring a lot of people's viewpoints in thinking that large markets supposedly don't matter. When you get past NYC, you see LA is strongly connected to USC, UCLA and the Pac-12 overall, Chicago is strongly connected to the Big Ten overall and Notre Dame, Dallas and Houston are strongly connected to UT, A&M and the Big 12 overall, Atlanta is strongly connected to all of the SEC and much of the ACC, even Philly has its Penn State connection, etc. Not every market is going to be like Birmingham or Columbus in terms of college football fandom (and it's unreasonable to expect that to be the standard), but each of the large markets besides maybe NYC *do* have a pretty tangible college football presence. Let's put it this way: if you're not a national brand like Nebraska (and very few schools are), you're not going to have much leverage in the conference realignment game unless you're delivering a key market (and flagship schools are generally going to get the benefit of the doubt in being able to argue that they have a state-wide market, while directional schools will have a tough time arguing that they carry anything other than their immediate market, if that).

(08-01-2017 02:22 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  This isn't hard.
The number of viewers for college football in the NYC television market is virtually identical to the number of viewers in the Birmingham market.

You want to talk viewers for MLB, NBA, Big Bang Theory, NYC is more valuable but the NYC TV market does not tune into college football with the intensity in other areas.

The Birmingham market consistently averages about 9.0 rating for ESPN college football. Birmingham has 696K TV households - so, about 62K CFB-viewing households on the average. (Note that Iron Bowl often draws a 50.0 rating in the Birmingham market - that means that 50% of the households watching TV in the Birmingham market watch the Iron Bowl!!).

For NYC to pull similar overall viewers as Birmingham, it needs to attract a 0.85 rating. 7.35M TV households X 0.85 rating = 62K CFB-viewing households. I'm not sure what NYC's CFB ratings are, but I doubt they are less than 0.85 rating. (the top-25 CFB markets - in terms of ratings - generally land on or near the 2.0 rating). However, the saturation seen in Birmingham is likely extremely juicy to TV advertisers.

Atlanta is the only top-10 TV market (in terms of number of TV households) to also grab top-10 college football *ratings*. Past ESPN announcements show that Atlanta consistently gets about a 3.3-3.4 rating for ESPN college football. Atlanta has about 2.4 million TV households - so, 79K+ CFB-viewing households on the average.

Accordingly, I believe this supports the claim that ATLANTA is the #1 college football viewership market in terms of NUMBER of TV households actually watching college football.

I also note that the top-20 markets (in terms of overall market size) of Detroit, Cleveland, Orlando, Tampa, and Phoenix have grabbed over 2.0 CFB ratings. This means that these markets actually have MORE actual viewers than most other top-10 CFB markets - in terms of in-market ratings. For instance, 2.2% of the Detroit or Tampa market is more than 5.0% of the New Orleans or Jacksonville market.

Back to the OP, I believe the best way to *quantify* a college team's market is to factor in:

1) home game attendance
2) revenue from ticket sales, donations, and merchandise
3) some TV viewership formula that accounts for BOTH (a) number of selections for national broadcasts, and (b) actual ratings compared to average ratings for the same channel and time slot.

(08-02-2017 10:25 AM)YNot Wrote:  

(08-01-2017 02:22 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  This isn't hard.
The number of viewers for college football in the NYC television market is virtually identical to the number of viewers in the Birmingham market.

You want to talk viewers for MLB, NBA, Big Bang Theory, NYC is more valuable but the NYC TV market does not tune into college football with the intensity in other areas.

The Birmingham market consistently averages about 9.0 rating for ESPN college football. Birmingham has 696K TV households - so, about 62K CFB-viewing households on the average. (Note that Iron Bowl often draws a 50.0 rating in the Birmingham market - that means that 50% of the households watching TV in the Birmingham market watch the Iron Bowl!!).

For NYC to pull similar overall viewers as Birmingham, it needs to attract a 0.85 rating. 7.35M TV households X 0.85 rating = 62K CFB-viewing households. I'm not sure what NYC's CFB ratings are, but I doubt they are less than 0.85 rating. (the top-25 CFB markets - in terms of ratings - generally land on or near the 2.0 rating). However, the saturation seen in Birmingham is likely extremely juicy to TV advertisers.

Atlanta is the only top-10 TV market (in terms of number of TV households) to also grab top-10 college football *ratings*. Past ESPN announcements show that Atlanta consistently gets about a 3.3-3.4 rating for ESPN college football. Atlanta has about 2.4 million TV households - so, 79K+ CFB-viewing households on the average.

Accordingly, I believe this supports the claim that ATLANTA is the #1 college football viewership market in terms of NUMBER of TV households actually watching college football.

I also note that the top-20 markets (in terms of overall market size) of Detroit, Cleveland, Orlando, Tampa, and Phoenix have grabbed over 2.0 CFB ratings. This means that these markets actually have MORE actual viewers than most other top-10 CFB markets - in terms of in-market ratings. For instance, 2.2% of the Detroit or Tampa market is more than 5.0% of the New Orleans or Jacksonville market.

In terms of sheer viewers, yes, I've seen stats that Atlanta is actually the top college football market. It makes sense since it's such a strong cross-section of local UGA and GT fans plus the entire SEC and a large portion of the ACC. Note that Tuscaloosa is only 3 hours away from Atlanta, which is actually slighter shorter than the distance from Austin to Dallas, so a school like Alabama is effectively tapping into a much larger market than its own home state would suggest.

I'm a large believer in the importance of network effects of multiple schools when it comes to larger markets. Do I believe that Illinois and Northwestern have fan bases as large as the pro sports teams in Chicago? No and it would be foolish to argue otherwise. However, when you combine Illinois and Northwestern with all of the Big Ten alums and fans in that market, that's a huge difference in terms of leverage where you can position it as a true "Big Ten market" (and that *does* carry a lot of value in marketplace as evidenced by the Big Ten's TV revenue). It's the same thing with the Pac-12 in LA, the SEC and ACC in Atlanta and other Southern markets, the Big 12 in Dallas and Houston, etc.

Nate Silver put this together several years ago:

https://thequad.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/0...haos/?_r=0


He also later did this analysis for pro sports and leagues:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-...o-leagues/

(08-02-2017 10:33 AM)YNot Wrote:  Back to the OP, I believe the best way to *quantify* a college team's market is to factor in:

1) home game attendance
2) revenue from ticket sales, donations, and merchandise
3) some TV viewership formula that accounts for BOTH (a) number of selections for national broadcasts, and (b) actual ratings compared to average ratings for the same channel and time slot.

I think this covers most of it.

I think the radio networks play a role, albeit a smaller one than tv networks play, in determining what markets a college team or a pro sports team for that matter can claim as well. I did some research on who actually listens to their radios anymore, and I have to admit, I was kind of surprised at the results, because I expected far fewer Americans to use their radios than what I really found out.

(09-05-2017 08:26 AM)DawgNBama Wrote:  I think the radio networks play a role, albeit a smaller one than tv networks play, in determining what markets a college team or a pro sports team for that matter can claim as well. I did some research on who actually listens to their radios anymore, and I have to admit, I was kind of surprised at the results, because I expected far fewer Americans to use their radios than what I really found out.

Interesting point because radio network USUALLY reflects which communities have enough interest that a station manager believes he can sell the product to advertisers.

Not 100% accurate, for example for a time Nebraska was on an AM station in Little Rock that had a touch more power than a light bulb. Cornhuskers were on because a bunch of railroad people were transferred to what had been the Missouri Pacific facility in North Little Rock from Omaha. They passed the hat among themselves to subsidize the station carrying the games.

Radio networks are important. South Carolina and Clemson have had statewide networks for 40-50 years. You can go anywhere in the state of South Carolina and find at least one, usually two or three stations carrying Carolina and/or Clemson games. Clemson had a even larger network in the late 1980s and 90s.

They had stations well into GA, NC, TN, and even other states. Atlanta had Clemson and Tennessee radio affiliates for a long time. Even now, Clemson has an Atlanta radio affiliate (1160 AM) that carries football AND basketball.

The Citadel for a long time had pretty much a statewide network. They had at least ten stations on their network. Even now, they have an affiliate in the Columbia area which they've had for 25-30 years. SC State's games used to air in the Charleston area. Now, they don't. They only air in the Columbia market.

Coastal Carolina games only air in the Myrtle Beach area. They haven't had the statewide influence yet to get stations outside of the Grand Strand. After a couple of seasons in FBS, they will probably gain more affiliates.

Notre Dame clearly has a huge fan base that spreads throughout the United States. It’s hard to find another fan base that covers as much ground.



http://thespun.com/independents/notre-da...re-located

Radio networks are unimportant. Only poor old people listen to the radio. Advertisers don't care about poor old people.

(09-05-2017 12:51 PM)TerryD Wrote:  

Notre Dame clearly has a huge fan base that spreads throughout the United States. It’s hard to find another fan base that covers as much ground.



http://thespun.com/independents/notre-da...re-located

Shouldn't surprise anyone given the # of Catholics and Irish descendents. It's still a bit odd to me that somebody would root for a team based on Irish ancestry. That's... I'd guess 1/3 of the USA somewhere down the line. I know that I have some on both sides.

Sent from my SM-J700T using CSNbbs mobile app

I still don't get that Notre Dame mystique. What is this, 1970? At least BYU is the only sizable LDS institution. There are plenty of other Catholic schools, granted only one more at this level of D-I and media hype aside, Notre Dame hasn't even mattered for an entire generation minus a few seasons.

It's crazy, I would have figured the majority of their diehards would have died out by now. I guess not.

(09-05-2017 06:21 PM)Hood-rich Wrote:  Shouldn't surprise anyone given the # of Catholics and Irish descendents. It's still a bit odd to me that somebody would root for a team based on Irish ancestry. That's... I'd guess 1/3 of the USA somewhere down the line. I know that I have some on both sides.

Sent from my SM-J700T using CSNbbs mobile app

The majority of this country's so-called Irish people are actually of Scottish origin i.e. Scots-Irish with a little Anglo-Irish mixed in.