(04-12-2019 01:12 PM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote: Not having Texas and OU in on the shift looks bad on the network, but slung right back at the conference for not being a unified front. Not terribly unlike any program poo-poo’ing non-Saturday games. There are some optics here.
What I suspect is happening is that you will see more ACCN stuff shown in amongst the SEC, Big Ten, and Big XII content. Whereas now, out here in Philly, it’s not uncommon to find B12 games on all three main stations at noon (ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2), or on two of the three (and maybe a game on Fox), now we might be seeing more ACC content on one or more of those stations. Heh, a Pitt, Cuse, BC, or UVA game on the local dial? Wow, way to finally get back there!
You can only fault the Big XII in that they had a shot to come back to the table to restructure (ahem, extend) their deal. They didn’t. It wasn’t great business to shove all that B12 content onto basic packages to east coast customers, but, hey, extend your deal, and maybe there’s less going to ESPN+.
the entire point of the ACCn is to get the ACC to agree to allow ESPN to move content off of those main channels that ESPN would have had to carry that content on before and have it placed on the ACCn
in the case of the SEC SEC SEC they had some of their second tier content moved to the SECn SECn SECn in their deal
ESPN has too much content as it is now for all the hours in the day and the only way to get it on the air is to have more channels which means they are paying for content that competes with their own content on other channels
the way to minimize that cost for ESPN is to start a conference network and have the conference share in the cost of running that network and then hope they can cram that network on as many cable MSOs as possible especially ones in areas that probably do not care much about that content
es for the Big 12 their media deal is pretty much 50/50 between ESPN and Fox so it does not make a lot of sense to extend one part of it when you probably are not going to extend the other part
and yes in the past with the Big 12 specifically (and others) media deals were for different lengths of time and started and stopped at different times, but that was because in the past conferences were only getting contracts for "first tier" content (especially nationally) and then when the media landscape changed suddenly there were players that wanted to bid on additional content (especially nationally) instead of just Learfield or Raycom
plus with Fox right now and their selling off of some sports channels (a lot of regionals that I think they worked ESPN on the value of) and them trying to decide how much sports they want on Fox over the air and how hard they want to work to make FS1 as big as possible and just all of the other transitions and transactions with them now is probably not the best time for the Big 12 to be looking to extend a contract with them that has 6 years still left on it
sure Fox bid hard on the Big 10, but for limited content, FIRST TIER content, and that content was on the market so Fox either bought it or missed out on it for another 6 years
the Big 12 is clearly in the middle of the P5 on media payments and OU and Texas are getting money at about the top and this is found money for OU and Texas especially so the Big 12 is not hurting right now and they have plenty of time to negotiate their deals in the future either when they expire or in a couple of years if they feel that is best
in the case of the content just sold that content was on the market and available so they sold it that is much different than extending a full media deal 6 years early with two companies
and I think more so it could be looked at as not the best business decision to have content that was to be carried on national channels and allow it to be placed on a network that has shared expenses with the conference and that relies on ESPN being able to cram that channel into markets that might not want it in a time of increasing cord cutting
even if ESPN had options to limit the footprint of the Big 12 content being shown on the national network it was still going to be shown in a large area on that network because it had to be
with the ACCn ESPN has the ability to place large amounts of content on there with no obligation to place it on the main networks without regard to the number of viewers now or 12 years from now which is a long time away in terms of what cable TV will be and the ability to cram a network and recover cost much less turn a profit and share a profit
with ESPN+ I am confident that ESPN will do a crappy job with streaming and the will try and charge way too much, but that content will still be there for anyone and everyone that wants it that has an internet connection
10 years from now will the ACCn even be on most cable MSOs?.....will traditional cable even be much of a thing then?.....who knows.....but we know ESPN can still move large amounts of content there if they see fit