(12-20-2018 02:39 PM)bullet Wrote: (12-20-2018 02:33 PM)adcorbett Wrote: That has been my thought. I don't think quarterfinal games would be worth as much as current NY6 games (non-playoff), much less more. And they need to be worth much more, just to break even (they would likely have to be home games, removing some of the ancillary income bowls get from visiting fans). Plus it will kill most of the value of the NY6 games as they exist now, and make them similar to the next tier level bowls now.
You sound like Clay Travis!
They just need to be worth more than the bowl game they replace.
Less than that actually. They would be replacing in essence two NY6 non CFP bowls, because those bowls would take the knock of the next 4 best teams theoretically. But those bowls would not lose their total value in the process, but rather would be degraded by a % in their appeal.
And since each lower bowl would also suffer a % decline with less appealing candidates ultimately you have to factor in the total of the % of decline all the way down the bowl ladder. The good news is that we have so many crap bowls already that exist on minimum TV funding that the overall loss wouldn't be anywhere near 100 million.
Also, the networks would be guaranteed a national audience for almost 12 hours of the weekend of the first round. Would they be worth the semis or finals kind of money? Probably not. Would they be worth more than what the % of loss would be for the 2 NY6 bowls that would be diminished on a day when football is traditionally watched no matter what? Probably.
The question is whether they would be worth enough more to alter the present system? To get the P5 to agree to do this they would have be worth a significant % more than the payouts of those 2 additional NY6 bowls, which right now payout to each team participating around 5 million which is only 1 million less than the semis.
So calculate your cost for the semis, and ask is the cost of producing 4 quarter round games double the cost of producing 4 semis? And is that cost worth it to ESPN when P5 participants in those NY6 bowls would have earned 5 million each anyway? And then temper that with the likelihood that those same P5 conferences would likely get another school into those NY6 bowls because they got an extra entrant into the playoffs thereby increasing their CFP / NY6 payouts by yet another unit?
I think the money is there for the conferences. So really the only question left is whether or not the production cost plus the extra comparable payouts to the conferences' participants leaves the network enough profit, or is in fact a loser. There's a strong chance that overhead wise it would be a loser because the profits for the semis minus double the production cost and the extra per team payouts may kill that profit.