(06-02-2023 11:57 AM)OneSockUp Wrote: (06-02-2023 11:42 AM)GTFletch Wrote: We know that in 2021 ESPN paid SEC $802M [$55M from CBS] and ACC $617M that is $1.4B (in 2021) per year for both leagues, at what point does ESPN want to just merge the two and create a true super league?
First off: ESPN doesn't run the SEC.
Secondly: The SEC is already a superleague.
Finally: The SEC won't take a pay cut to include programs they don't want to be associated with. So unless ESPN is going to pay more to all parties, why in the world would the conferences agree to that?
We talk about how the ACC is burdened by their GOR, but so is ESPN. They have to pay Wake Forest and Pitt $35,000,000 every year for the next decade.
The point is that you don't let the Big 10 grow nationally around you and then grow into your markets. ESPN knows this. The SEC knows this. It is why we took the best to our West. ESPN wanted them, as they wanted all of the prime product from Virginia to Kansas and South. The SEC wanted Texas, Oklahoma and Texas A&M in '91. We now have them to go with Arkansas and added Missouri as well (ESPN suggestion). No champion has come from North of that line except Ohio State for the last 25 years. No champion has come from West of that line since the title stripped from USC.
Now while the SEC's success has been tremendous and we are a Super Conference, what helped to make that was not lost on ESPN. ESPN holds 100% rights to the ACC, SEC, and AAC. They hold 50% rights to the Big 12 plus T3 and now have all of their best brands under 100% contract in the SEC except for Kansas (which could eventually head our way). They don't own all of the access to Texas, but they hold the dominant access to Texas.
So the question of why a merger? Because it locks down the East Coast access into the South which vulnerable brands may be tempted to be a part of in a FOX/Big 10 move into the two best regional markets for college sports in the whole damn nation. If ESPN can hold onto that, and tie it up longer, they will monopolize the product likely to make up over 1/3rd of the entrants into the CFP and the most of the recent champions in college softball, baseball, women's gymnastics, and a very decent percentage of hoops champions and have them under their umbrella.
You see ESPN has followed demographics for decades and they know where the lion's share of recruits come from, and where they stay to play in front of momma and friends and family. They know that these two regions (SE & SW) have the highest viewer saturation numbers in the nation (more actual viewers to total possible viewers than anywhere else). If college sports is their business, and it is, these two regions combined are the best product they could hold.
What's the SEC's interest? They dominate the regions now. They dominate college football championships, but they don't dominate the media money. The more markets the Big 10 adds the more money they have for pay for play, and they have corporate sponsorship for NIL which is why Michigan finally made solid strides these past two years. If they enter the Southeast that impacts our advertising and media money. Let that sink into the fan brain. Defensive moves to secure what the SEC and I might add ESPN have carefully built up is not a farfetched, AD laughable, issue. It is a very real threat to the influence the SEC has built up in its region. If taking in the ACC locks down that influence for a very long time why not do it? They are systemically cousins anyway. They too came out of the old Southern Conference.
To do it you obviously can't let it detract from the SEC's revenue. But if 7 schools have been kind of allowed to serve notice to the ACC, let ESPN pay them more, perhaps a couple at SEC levels, 4-6 more at a lesser tier, and then hold payments where they are currently for the rest.
If the move doesn't impact the SEC's bottom line, keeps an unwanted presence out of our region, and wholly lock up the regionalism around which the SEC was built, why not do it. To do nothing is like Chamberlain declaring peace in our time after meeting with Hitler. You know the war is coming. Are you going to wait until they chase your butt off of the French beaches to do something about it?
The Alliance was declared and Hitler still took the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, um, I meant USC and UCLA gutting a fellow Alliance member, promising scheduling arrangement to the ACC which disappeared as soon as USC and UCLA appeared. Now he wants a warm water port in Miami and outpost in major Southern markets like Atlanta, Raleigh/Durham and into states like Virginia.
If the SEC sits idly by while this happens it will lose its advantages, some of its revenue, and you the fan will be howling why didn't we do something.
We have two options to do something.
1. We go a bit more national. The SEC adds Colorado, the Arizona Schools and Kansas and extends the broadcast window into Mountain Time Zone which also airs through the Arizona schools in the Pacific Time Zone. That's more broadcast windows which means more money. But that sure as hell isn't SEC!
2. We figure out a way to merge the ACC with the SEC stabilizing the schools in the ACC which are most likely to be tempted by a Big 10 offer. We merge the ACCN into the SECN and make prime rate in all of those combined states saving ESPN overhead costs and making us more T3 revenue. We extend SEC interest via the ACC merger into Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts. We add Kansas to the West where with Missouri they extend into the Chicago market. We give Notre Dame the same affiliation with the merged group as they have now and use the Irish to extend the SECN into Northern Midwestern cities held by the Big 10. We lock them out of the two strongest recruiting regions in the nation and we continue to win until the nation sees the SEC as the Supreme Conference. Just with Clemson and Florida State the SEC would hold 22 of the last 25 national championships in College football. Then we wait. Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State have 100,000 seat stadia they need filled. When they want in we have the one League we are headed toward. USC, Washington, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Nebraska may wish to join as well.
This is the game. And while it seems unnecessary for an SEC with Texas and Oklahoma to need anyone else, that is merely a mirage. Merge with the ACC and nothing can surround us, sap our strength, impact our markets, or damage our revenue. And that folks is why this has merit. It doesn't mean it's going to happen, but it would be a wise and powerful move if it did!
Oh, and one other thing. When Texas and Oklahoma joined the SEC it gave the SEC a 3 billion dollar lead in total valuation over the Big 10. Only Notre Dame plus Washington or Kansas can help them catch up in those totals and then they would trail by 1.5 billion. My point over such an obscure data point? They can't catch us unless they go national and can only outgain us by splitting our markets to damage us. This isn't an "if the Big 10 goes national" it is a "the Big 10 has to go national" or they could lose schools to us. So they will absolutely try to invade the Southern markets. They have no other option.
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Does ESPN want to Merge the SEC & ACC?
