And if so when or will it pop?

Fact is, birth rates have been trending downward and this is going come to a head for colleges as soon as about 5 years (give or take) from now because of the lack of domestic births during the Great Recession. These people in the college aged pool are being replaced by immigrants, who can be better students than traditional American students in many cases but don't always have the same skillset or mastery of English as a traditional student, let alone the same interests (including sports). Less or a flat lining population growth rate means, at the very least, colleges likely won't grow. So future subsidy will likely be less, even if it stays the same, because of inflation.

And a higher proportion of non-traditional American students will mean fewer major college sports fans, especially for football. Football participation is already struggling in some parts of the country due to safety concerns, meaning more parents are steering their children away from it and that means, by proportion of programs playing football (which is always growing) there are a smaller pool of players. So the foreign/new American interest will be minimal and the domestic interest could be much smaller in a generation or two. Basketball should be able to suffer less of a fate due to it's global/more universal appeal but it is decidedly less popular in the US ATM.

And if we will have a higher amount of non-traditional Americans, first generation Americans and immigrants as well as a declining traditional American population and declining interest in football, it means days of American football being so popular (by percentage at least) is numbered and if so, these big conferences can't keep expecting explosive growth in TV contracts.

In fact, based on the decline of cable and satellite TV in raw subscription numbers (let alone the percentage) and the ever increasing age and inevitable mortality of Boomers and Gen. Xers and their viewing habits compared to younger people, it's obvious that there's a bubble for the unsustainable rights fees growth for the even most in demand schools. Sure, they'll make money from some of the last holdouts who prefer cable like me and some streamers, who will buy subscriptions to follow at least their own team. But fewer people and fewer people are continuing to watch cable/satellite and while many are streaming more than ever, they won't stream everything for the most part and are unlikely to go chasing a random game, even some involving P4 teams. So there will be less money coming in for everyone, including the P4/2. We'll see what becomes of this joint venture by Fox, Disney and Discovery being challenged by Fubo and if it is a savior for the status quo.

The NFL will be fine, they seem to be able to weather the trends better, although we should expect their general increases to decline some based on the same factors I laid out. But college football? Perhaps only the top 20 or so programs will be able to sustain the constant growth we've seen for decades, even at increasingly reduced levels. But if the seemingly inevitable split is too small and not inclusive enough, it could backfire and kill as much interest as concentrating the best brands brings. I know I won't watch it if Houston is not invited. And did I even mention basketball and other sports much? I'll save it for another post or thread, as this post is long enough.

This TV money is a bigger problem for the P4 (and P2 whose attitude is the money will keep going up, so they leverage their wealth and status to shape the future of college athletics) and less so for the G5 and to an even lesser extent to FCS and below because they aren't so reliant on TV money. But if there are fewer traditional students and if this whole thing about student-athletes becoming employees becomes de jure/statute, then they are in trouble and most AD's will collapse unless the NCAA reduces the number of required sports necessary to compete in D-I and some sports simply return to club sports status. And even that may not be enough to save them, so everyone, even the G5 and below, will have some serious soul searching to do. Few will search for their games and perhaps there will be no more having a captive audience waiting for SportsCenter to come on, meaning even fewer potential viewers.

I think a bubble is bound to pop, if not an outright crash with even the most elite programs shuttering or becoming an eggshell of themselves.

The bubble is already popping, this is what it looks like.

Fox, NBC, CBS, Warner Bros Discovery (Turner TNT Sports) didnt swoop in to make the PAC an offer when they rejected ESPN. Amazon, Google Youtube didn't step in. Apple gave them a lousy lowball offer. And that's that for the PAC.

ESPN leaked their number for the college football playoff -- $1.3B a year. Less than most anybody thought a year ago. Now that offer isn't a signed contract yet, but you didn't hear any rumblings about the other networks being surprised that it was so low and they had planned much better offers.

The RSNs look like they're going to come out of bankruptcy, for now.

The age of effectively unlimited ESPN money for sports is over

(02-24-2024 03:32 AM)C2__ Wrote:  And if so when or will it pop?

Fact is, birth rates have been trending downward and this is going come to a head for colleges as soon as about 5 years (give or take) from now because of the lack of domestic births during the Great Recession. These people in the college aged pool are being replaced by immigrants, who can be better students than traditional American students in many cases but don't always have the same skillset or mastery of English as a traditional student, let alone the same interests (including sports). Less or a flat lining population growth rate means, at the very least, colleges likely won't grow. So future subsidy will likely be less, even if it stays the same, because of inflation.

And a higher proportion of non-traditional American students will mean fewer major college sports fans, especially for football. Football participation is already struggling in some parts of the country due to safety concerns, meaning more parents are steering their children away from it and that means, by proportion of programs playing football (which is always growing) there are a smaller pool of players. So the foreign/new American interest will be minimal and the domestic interest could be much smaller in a generation or two. Basketball should be able to suffer less of a fate due to it's global/more universal appeal but it is decidedly less popular in the US ATM.

And if we will have a higher amount of non-traditional Americans, first generation Americans and immigrants as well as a declining traditional American population and declining interest in football, it means days of American football being so popular (by percentage at least) is numbered and if so, these big conferences can't keep expecting explosive growth in TV contracts.

In fact, based on the decline of cable and satellite TV in raw subscription numbers (let alone the percentage) and the ever increasing age and inevitable mortality of Boomers and Gen. Xers and their viewing habits compared to younger people, it's obvious that there's a bubble for the unsustainable rights fees growth for the even most in demand schools. Sure, they'll make money from some of the last holdouts who prefer cable like me and some streamers, who will buy subscriptions to follow at least their own team. But fewer people and fewer people are continuing to watch cable/satellite and while many are streaming more than ever, they won't stream everything for the most part and are unlikely to go chasing a random game, even some involving P4 teams. So there will be less money coming in for everyone, including the P4/2. We'll see what becomes of this joint venture by Fox, Disney and Discovery being challenged by Fubo and if it is a savior for the status quo.

The NFL will be fine, they seem to be able to weather the trends better, although we should expect their general increases to decline some based on the same factors I laid out. But college football? Perhaps only the top 20 or so programs will be able to sustain the constant growth we've seen for decades, even at increasingly reduced levels. But if the seemingly inevitable split is too small and not inclusive enough, it could backfire and kill as much interest as concentrating the best brands brings. I know I won't watch it if Houston is not invited. And did I even mention basketball and other sports much? I'll save it for another post or thread, as this post is long enough.

This TV money is a bigger problem for the P4 (and P2 whose attitude is the money will keep going up, so they leverage their wealth and status to shape the future of college athletics) and less so for the G5 and to an even lesser extent to FCS and below because they aren't so reliant on TV money. But if there are fewer traditional students and if this whole thing about student-athletes becoming employees becomes de jure/statute, then they are in trouble and most AD's will collapse unless the NCAA reduces the number of required sports necessary to compete in D-I and some sports simply return to club sports status. And even that may not be enough to save them, so everyone, even the G5 and below, will have some serious soul searching to do. Few will search for their games and perhaps there will be no more having a captive audience waiting for SportsCenter to come on, meaning even fewer potential viewers.

I think a bubble is bound to pop, if not an outright crash with even the most elite programs shuttering or becoming an eggshell of themselves.

Here’s the thing: is it actually a bubble when sports rights have grown unimpeded since 1980? We have had a version of this story virtually every couple of years: when the Yankees signed a huge rights deal with MSG and Fox way outbid everyone for the NFL in the 1990s, when RSNs and conference networks rose and ESPN was at its household peak in the 2000s, and even people were legitimately questioning whether the Big Ten was making a mistake in taking a short-term TV deal in the mid-2010s as opposed to locking themselves down for the next 15 years like the SEC and ACC. (Seriously - was a common strain that the ACC signed a smarter TV deal than the Big Ten because “Of course the sports rights bubble will pop by 2020!”) All of those “bubble pop” predictions have been proven wrong.

You could argue that sports rights are more like the stock market: there might be hot periods and cold periods, but the overall trajectory is growth over a long period of time.

Now, the important thing about the stock market is that the gains aren’t evenly distributed. We see that in the current rise in the stock market that is largely driven by the “Magnificent Seven” growth stocks at the top - if you look at the value stock and small cap stock categories, they have lagged.

So, the risk isn’t to the P2 at all. The Big Ten and SEC are straight up the most watched sports entities in American sports besides the NFL. They aren’t the ones at risk. It’s the middle class or even upper middle class - like we just saw with Pac-12 - that is most at risk. Mega-stars are still getting paid and that’s true in every facet of the entertainment industry - music (see Taylor Swift), movies (where the studios have a “blockbuster or bust” strategy) and TV (see the top Netflix producer deals).

Now, I fully grant that the tier below that top level is getting squeezed, and the bottom level is just getting paid commodity-level prices. So, it would be fair to say that the gains of the NFL and P2 for rights fees doesn’t mean that the tiers below them will get any gains, just as the gains for Taylor Swift and Shonda Rhimes do nothing for the musicians and entertainment producers below them. That is a real issue in the economy overall where the gains are increasingly concentrated at the top while the middle gets squeezed. That is less of a sports rights issue and more of an across-the-board global economic issue.

As for enrollment trends, while it’s true that the overall college-aged population is heading toward a cliff, anyone that has dealt with college admissions for the past 5 years knows that the same superstar dichotomy that I described above has hit academia. The brand name schools are getting more applications and having higher demand than EVER. This includes most major flagship schools, which directly overlap with the P4 membership. So, the P4 schools are NOT the ones facing enrollment issues. They’re the ones actually benefiting the most (along with elite schools like the Ivies) from a “flight to quality” in the college enrollment space. All of those Big Ten and SEC schools that might have been looked at as backup schools for top students in the past no longer have enrollment standards that are anywhere close to backup metrics anymore.

(If you want to understand the bloodbath on how hard it is to get into a brand name school right now - and I’m talking “brand names” like Wisconsin, Maryland and Texas A&M, much less the Ivies - take a look at the Applying to College Reddit page. Anyone that attended a P4 school on this forum should thank their lucky stars that they’re not applying to their schools today because most of us probably wouldn’t have stand a chance to get in now. Most of the P4 schools could lose half of the applications that they receive now and still be more selective than they were 10 years ago.)

(02-24-2024 09:40 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(02-24-2024 03:32 AM)C2__ Wrote:  And if so when or will it pop?

Fact is, birth rates have been trending downward and this is going come to a head for colleges as soon as about 5 years (give or take) from now because of the lack of domestic births during the Great Recession. These people in the college aged pool are being replaced by immigrants, who can be better students than traditional American students in many cases but don't always have the same skillset or mastery of English as a traditional student, let alone the same interests (including sports). Less or a flat lining population growth rate means, at the very least, colleges likely won't grow. So future subsidy will likely be less, even if it stays the same, because of inflation.

And a higher proportion of non-traditional American students will mean fewer major college sports fans, especially for football. Football participation is already struggling in some parts of the country due to safety concerns, meaning more parents are steering their children away from it and that means, by proportion of programs playing football (which is always growing) there are a smaller pool of players. So the foreign/new American interest will be minimal and the domestic interest could be much smaller in a generation or two. Basketball should be able to suffer less of a fate due to it's global/more universal appeal but it is decidedly less popular in the US ATM.

And if we will have a higher amount of non-traditional Americans, first generation Americans and immigrants as well as a declining traditional American population and declining interest in football, it means days of American football being so popular (by percentage at least) is numbered and if so, these big conferences can't keep expecting explosive growth in TV contracts.

In fact, based on the decline of cable and satellite TV in raw subscription numbers (let alone the percentage) and the ever increasing age and inevitable mortality of Boomers and Gen. Xers and their viewing habits compared to younger people, it's obvious that there's a bubble for the unsustainable rights fees growth for the even most in demand schools. Sure, they'll make money from some of the last holdouts who prefer cable like me and some streamers, who will buy subscriptions to follow at least their own team. But fewer people and fewer people are continuing to watch cable/satellite and while many are streaming more than ever, they won't stream everything for the most part and are unlikely to go chasing a random game, even some involving P4 teams. So there will be less money coming in for everyone, including the P4/2. We'll see what becomes of this joint venture by Fox, Disney and Discovery being challenged by Fubo and if it is a savior for the status quo.

The NFL will be fine, they seem to be able to weather the trends better, although we should expect their general increases to decline some based on the same factors I laid out. But college football? Perhaps only the top 20 or so programs will be able to sustain the constant growth we've seen for decades, even at increasingly reduced levels. But if the seemingly inevitable split is too small and not inclusive enough, it could backfire and kill as much interest as concentrating the best brands brings. I know I won't watch it if Houston is not invited. And did I even mention basketball and other sports much? I'll save it for another post or thread, as this post is long enough.

This TV money is a bigger problem for the P4 (and P2 whose attitude is the money will keep going up, so they leverage their wealth and status to shape the future of college athletics) and less so for the G5 and to an even lesser extent to FCS and below because they aren't so reliant on TV money. But if there are fewer traditional students and if this whole thing about student-athletes becoming employees becomes de jure/statute, then they are in trouble and most AD's will collapse unless the NCAA reduces the number of required sports necessary to compete in D-I and some sports simply return to club sports status. And even that may not be enough to save them, so everyone, even the G5 and below, will have some serious soul searching to do. Few will search for their games and perhaps there will be no more having a captive audience waiting for SportsCenter to come on, meaning even fewer potential viewers.

I think a bubble is bound to pop, if not an outright crash with even the most elite programs shuttering or becoming an eggshell of themselves.

Here’s the thing: is it actually a bubble when sports rights have grown unimpeded since 1980?

Real estate values grew unimpeded, barring regional recessions, from 1929 until ....2008 or so. And yes, they're up from where they were in 2005. But the crash of 2008 definitely happened. There was definitely a bubble, and it absolutely popped.

Quote:We have had a version of this story virtually every couple of years: when the Yankees signed a huge rights deal with MSG and Fox way outbid everyone for the NFL in the 1990s, when RSNs and conference networks rose and ESPN was at its household peak in the 2000s,

Those were markers of big new factors pushing the dollar signs upward. A fourth network joining the game, the ESPN subcriber-fee money-printing-machine, the same money-printing-machine on the local level with RSNs.

The things that the sports world hoped would swoop in to replace the cable money -- "over-the-top" subscription services, trillion-dollar tech companies buying sports for streaming services -- did not replace the lost money.

Quote:and even people were legitimately questioning whether the Big Ten was making a mistake in taking a short-term TV deal in the mid-2010s as opposed to locking themselves down for the next 15 years like the SEC and ACC. (Seriously - was a common strain that the ACC signed a smarter TV deal than the Big Ten because “Of course the sports rights bubble will pop by 2020!”) All of those “bubble pop” predictions have been proven wrong.

Wrong, or just premature? Because ESPN's subscriber numbers are down to around 70M from a peak of 100M. The OTA networks are in a similar situation financially -- they're "free", but they make a lot of money from monthly subscriber fees because nobody's going to buy YoutubeTV or Xfiinity or DirecTV if it doesn't have the "free TV" channels. the RSNs are in bankruptcy.

Quote:You could argue that sports rights are more like the stock market: there might be hot periods and cold periods, but the overall trajectory is growth over a long period of time.

Now, the important thing about the stock market is that the gains aren’t evenly distributed. We see that in the current rise in the stock market that is largely driven by the “Magnificent Seven” growth stocks at the top - if you look at the value stock and small cap stock categories, they have lagged.

So, the risk isn’t to the P2 at all. The Big Ten and SEC are straight up the most watched sports entities in American sports besides the NFL. They aren’t the ones at risk.

There's always a risk. Reading the accounts of the network - NFL negotiations, before Fox broke through the wall like Kool Aid Man, the networks were talking about giving the NFL a haircut because the games were losing money, not getting enough ratings and advertisements to pay the rights fees. So it's very possible that the next round of Big Ten negotiations, after say PAramount is sold for parts and WBD goes through chapter 11, the Big Ten gets 10% less in the next round.

Quote:It’s the middle class or even upper middle class - like we just saw with Pac-12 - that is most at risk.

Yes. What I'm saying is a reversal of the usual adage "when the big dog gets a cold, the little dog gets pneumonia". When the PAC-12 dies of "sports rights bubble popping", the College Football Playoff gets a cold, specifically "$1.3B instead of $2B"

Quote: All of those Big Ten and SEC schools that might have been looked at as backup schools for top students in the past no longer have enrollment standards that are anywhere close to backup metrics anymore.

From a major college SPORTS perspective, the demographicc problem it's not that Michigan State or Auburn or Oregon State will have unfilled seats. It's that the Michigan State Class of 2032 might care a whole lot less about whether the Spartans are 8-4 or 11-1 than the class of 2022 or 2012 or 1992.

Some of the population and populace profile factors that C2__ mentioned … such as cultural and historical disinterest vis-à-vis football … might also trigger another trend. That is, that these “new” students may not be willing to pay a “tax” of mandatory student athletic fees that support many of the universities’ sports programs. Add the issue of potentially paying student-athlete-employees, and the non-athlete students may really question why they’re paying those fees.

For some of these schools (see the Knight Commission reports) athletic fees can range up to 60-70% of their revenues. (At NIU, for example, the fee revenues range from 20-30%. Also note NIU is struggling with stagnant enrollment, which further constrains fee revenue. I do not think NIU is atypical per mid-majors/G5, having perused the Knight data.) These universities don’t have the big OTA/streaming revenues that many of the P4/M2 schools have.

As a footnote, if the P4/M2 broadcast revenues are also subject to a bursting or deflating “bubble,” that could also put the squeeze on other schools’ revenues from so-called “payday” games. Of course, depending on how many breakaway schools there could be, they might not need to play the G5.

What that C2__ has opened up is a multi-faceted issue in which almost anything can be tossed up for discussion. But it is a "big picture" discussion worth having for serious college sports fans.

NFL owners are buying MLS teams
the writing is on the wall
start investing in soccer

(02-24-2024 09:40 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(02-24-2024 03:32 AM)C2__ Wrote:  And if so when or will it pop?

Fact is, birth rates have been trending downward and this is going come to a head for colleges as soon as about 5 years (give or take) from now because of the lack of domestic births during the Great Recession. These people in the college aged pool are being replaced by immigrants, who can be better students than traditional American students in many cases but don't always have the same skillset or mastery of English as a traditional student, let alone the same interests (including sports). Less or a flat lining population growth rate means, at the very least, colleges likely won't grow. So future subsidy will likely be less, even if it stays the same, because of inflation.

And a higher proportion of non-traditional American students will mean fewer major college sports fans, especially for football. Football participation is already struggling in some parts of the country due to safety concerns, meaning more parents are steering their children away from it and that means, by proportion of programs playing football (which is always growing) there are a smaller pool of players. So the foreign/new American interest will be minimal and the domestic interest could be much smaller in a generation or two. Basketball should be able to suffer less of a fate due to it's global/more universal appeal but it is decidedly less popular in the US ATM.

And if we will have a higher amount of non-traditional Americans, first generation Americans and immigrants as well as a declining traditional American population and declining interest in football, it means days of American football being so popular (by percentage at least) is numbered and if so, these big conferences can't keep expecting explosive growth in TV contracts.

In fact, based on the decline of cable and satellite TV in raw subscription numbers (let alone the percentage) and the ever increasing age and inevitable mortality of Boomers and Gen. Xers and their viewing habits compared to younger people, it's obvious that there's a bubble for the unsustainable rights fees growth for the even most in demand schools. Sure, they'll make money from some of the last holdouts who prefer cable like me and some streamers, who will buy subscriptions to follow at least their own team. But fewer people and fewer people are continuing to watch cable/satellite and while many are streaming more than ever, they won't stream everything for the most part and are unlikely to go chasing a random game, even some involving P4 teams. So there will be less money coming in for everyone, including the P4/2. We'll see what becomes of this joint venture by Fox, Disney and Discovery being challenged by Fubo and if it is a savior for the status quo.

The NFL will be fine, they seem to be able to weather the trends better, although we should expect their general increases to decline some based on the same factors I laid out. But college football? Perhaps only the top 20 or so programs will be able to sustain the constant growth we've seen for decades, even at increasingly reduced levels. But if the seemingly inevitable split is too small and not inclusive enough, it could backfire and kill as much interest as concentrating the best brands brings. I know I won't watch it if Houston is not invited. And did I even mention basketball and other sports much? I'll save it for another post or thread, as this post is long enough.

This TV money is a bigger problem for the P4 (and P2 whose attitude is the money will keep going up, so they leverage their wealth and status to shape the future of college athletics) and less so for the G5 and to an even lesser extent to FCS and below because they aren't so reliant on TV money. But if there are fewer traditional students and if this whole thing about student-athletes becoming employees becomes de jure/statute, then they are in trouble and most AD's will collapse unless the NCAA reduces the number of required sports necessary to compete in D-I and some sports simply return to club sports status. And even that may not be enough to save them, so everyone, even the G5 and below, will have some serious soul searching to do. Few will search for their games and perhaps there will be no more having a captive audience waiting for SportsCenter to come on, meaning even fewer potential viewers.

I think a bubble is bound to pop, if not an outright crash with even the most elite programs shuttering or becoming an eggshell of themselves.

Here’s the thing: is it actually a bubble when sports rights have grown unimpeded since 1980? We have had a version of this story virtually every couple of years: when the Yankees signed a huge rights deal with MSG and Fox way outbid everyone for the NFL in the 1990s, when RSNs and conference networks rose and ESPN was at its household peak in the 2000s, and even people were legitimately questioning whether the Big Ten was making a mistake in taking a short-term TV deal in the mid-2010s as opposed to locking themselves down for the next 15 years like the SEC and ACC. (Seriously - was a common strain that the ACC signed a smarter TV deal than the Big Ten because “Of course the sports rights bubble will pop by 2020!”) All of those “bubble pop” predictions have been proven wrong.

You could argue that sports rights are more like the stock market: there might be hot periods and cold periods, but the overall trajectory is growth over a long period of time.

Now, the important thing about the stock market is that the gains aren’t evenly distributed. We see that in the current rise in the stock market that is largely driven by the “Magnificent Seven” growth stocks at the top - if you look at the value stock and small cap stock categories, they have lagged.

So, the risk isn’t to the P2 at all. The Big Ten and SEC are straight up the most watched sports entities in American sports besides the NFL. They aren’t the ones at risk. It’s the middle class or even upper middle class - like we just saw with Pac-12 - that is most at risk. Mega-stars are still getting paid and that’s true in every facet of the entertainment industry - music (see Taylor Swift), movies (where the studios have a “blockbuster or bust” strategy) and TV (see the top Netflix producer deals).

Now, I fully grant that the tier below that top level is getting squeezed, and the bottom level is just getting paid commodity-level prices. So, it would be fair to say that the gains of the NFL and P2 for rights fees doesn’t mean that the tiers below them will get any gains, just as the gains for Taylor Swift and Shonda Rhimes do nothing for the musicians and entertainment producers below them. That is a real issue in the economy overall where the gains are increasingly concentrated at the top while the middle gets squeezed. That is less of a sports rights issue and more of an across-the-board global economic issue.

As for enrollment trends, while it’s true that the overall college-aged population is heading toward a cliff, anyone that has dealt with college admissions for the past 5 years knows that the same superstar dichotomy that I described above has hit academia. The brand name schools are getting more applications and having higher demand than EVER. This includes most major flagship schools, which directly overlap with the P4 membership. So, the P4 schools are NOT the ones facing enrollment issues. They’re the ones actually benefiting the most (along with elite schools like the Ivies) from a “flight to quality” in the college enrollment space. All of those Big Ten and SEC schools that might have been looked at as backup schools for top students in the past no longer have enrollment standards that are anywhere close to backup metrics anymore.

(If you want to understand the bloodbath on how hard it is to get into a brand name school right now - and I’m talking “brand names” like Wisconsin, Maryland and Texas A&M, much less the Ivies - take a look at the Applying to College Reddit page. Anyone that attended a P4 school on this forum should thank their lucky stars that they’re not applying to their schools today because most of us probably wouldn’t have stand a chance to get in now. Most of the P4 schools could lose half of the applications that they receive now and still be more selective than they were 10 years ago.)

If it is a bubble, the P2 will be squeezed after everyone else has been. I was working for a contractor when the housing bubble collapsed in 2008. We built most of the McMansions in my county. We didn't slow down until winter of 2010-2011, while lesser contractors were 'struggling' and trying to grab jobs that self-employed carpenters would normally take, and as a result self-employed carpenters were genuinely struggling to get enough work even w/o greedy contractor middlemen to claim the usual 2/3 of their labor product. Sh*t rolls down hill, before it starts piling up to the point that the top can no longer ignore it.

(02-24-2024 10:02 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  From a major college SPORTS perspective, the demographicc problem it's not that Michigan State or Auburn or Oregon State will have unfilled seats. It's that the Michigan State Class of 2032 might care a whole lot less about whether the Spartans are 8-4 or 11-1 than the class of 2022 or 2012 or 1992.

This is a very underappreciated point. And I think the transfer portal may bring the concerns to the fore more quickly. School and state pride/loyalty has gone out the window. Now, for athletes, it's about who can pay me the most money (or get me the most in the future). If it means they have to transfer every other semester, then so be it. I don't blame them.

We're in a new phase, so the typical fan is still on autopilot, which is why it hasn't been reflected in ratings quite yet. But fans are starting to sense the one-sided loyalty and interest is waning. In my social circle, there has definitely been a shift. And most of my group is Ohio State, Michigan, and Notre Dame fans! We note that OSU's 2002 National Championship team had 82 guys from Ohio on the roster, including nearly all of the key contributors. Today, it's only 51 players, and a lot of those are just depth guys.

Saturdays are no longer blocked out for our team's game, let alone having a casual interest in the rest of the conference/country. Our teenage kids can't even name three players on dad's favorite team. When I was young, I would be in near tears if my team lost and distraught for days. While that's not healthy, it's the passion that drives dollars. I believe the tradition and passion college football is salvageable, and can even get stronger, but I have a lot of doubts about the current trajectory.

(02-24-2024 09:40 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(02-24-2024 03:32 AM)C2__ Wrote:  And if so when or will it pop?

Fact is, birth rates have been trending downward and this is going come to a head for colleges as soon as about 5 years (give or take) from now because of the lack of domestic births during the Great Recession. These people in the college aged pool are being replaced by immigrants, who can be better students than traditional American students in many cases but don't always have the same skillset or mastery of English as a traditional student, let alone the same interests (including sports). Less or a flat lining population growth rate means, at the very least, colleges likely won't grow. So future subsidy will likely be less, even if it stays the same, because of inflation.

And a higher proportion of non-traditional American students will mean fewer major college sports fans, especially for football. Football participation is already struggling in some parts of the country due to safety concerns, meaning more parents are steering their children away from it and that means, by proportion of programs playing football (which is always growing) there are a smaller pool of players. So the foreign/new American interest will be minimal and the domestic interest could be much smaller in a generation or two. Basketball should be able to suffer less of a fate due to it's global/more universal appeal but it is decidedly less popular in the US ATM.

And if we will have a higher amount of non-traditional Americans, first generation Americans and immigrants as well as a declining traditional American population and declining interest in football, it means days of American football being so popular (by percentage at least) is numbered and if so, these big conferences can't keep expecting explosive growth in TV contracts.

In fact, based on the decline of cable and satellite TV in raw subscription numbers (let alone the percentage) and the ever increasing age and inevitable mortality of Boomers and Gen. Xers and their viewing habits compared to younger people, it's obvious that there's a bubble for the unsustainable rights fees growth for the even most in demand schools. Sure, they'll make money from some of the last holdouts who prefer cable like me and some streamers, who will buy subscriptions to follow at least their own team. But fewer people and fewer people are continuing to watch cable/satellite and while many are streaming more than ever, they won't stream everything for the most part and are unlikely to go chasing a random game, even some involving P4 teams. So there will be less money coming in for everyone, including the P4/2. We'll see what becomes of this joint venture by Fox, Disney and Discovery being challenged by Fubo and if it is a savior for the status quo.

The NFL will be fine, they seem to be able to weather the trends better, although we should expect their general increases to decline some based on the same factors I laid out. But college football? Perhaps only the top 20 or so programs will be able to sustain the constant growth we've seen for decades, even at increasingly reduced levels. But if the seemingly inevitable split is too small and not inclusive enough, it could backfire and kill as much interest as concentrating the best brands brings. I know I won't watch it if Houston is not invited. And did I even mention basketball and other sports much? I'll save it for another post or thread, as this post is long enough.

This TV money is a bigger problem for the P4 (and P2 whose attitude is the money will keep going up, so they leverage their wealth and status to shape the future of college athletics) and less so for the G5 and to an even lesser extent to FCS and below because they aren't so reliant on TV money. But if there are fewer traditional students and if this whole thing about student-athletes becoming employees becomes de jure/statute, then they are in trouble and most AD's will collapse unless the NCAA reduces the number of required sports necessary to compete in D-I and some sports simply return to club sports status. And even that may not be enough to save them, so everyone, even the G5 and below, will have some serious soul searching to do. Few will search for their games and perhaps there will be no more having a captive audience waiting for SportsCenter to come on, meaning even fewer potential viewers.

I think a bubble is bound to pop, if not an outright crash with even the most elite programs shuttering or becoming an eggshell of themselves.

As for enrollment trends, while it’s true that the overall college-aged population is heading toward a cliff, anyone that has dealt with college admissions for the past 5 years knows that the same superstar dichotomy that I described above has hit academia. The brand name schools are getting more applications and having higher demand than EVER. This includes most major flagship schools, which directly overlap with the P4 membership. So, the P4 schools are NOT the ones facing enrollment issues. They’re the ones actually benefiting the most (along with elite schools like the Ivies) from a “flight to quality” in the college enrollment space. All of those Big Ten and SEC schools that might have been looked at as backup schools for top students in the past no longer have enrollment standards that are anywhere close to backup metrics anymore.

(If you want to understand the bloodbath on how hard it is to get into a brand name school right now - and I’m talking “brand names” like Wisconsin, Maryland and Texas A&M, much less the Ivies - take a look at the Applying to College Reddit page. Anyone that attended a P4 school on this forum should thank their lucky stars that they’re not applying to their schools today because most of us probably wouldn’t have stand a chance to get in now. Most of the P4 schools could lose half of the applications that they receive now and still be more selective than they were 10 years ago.)

Right, I meant to include this in the OP (or maybe I did and just forgot. Anyways, it was a long post and I'm not digging back through). The majors and the Ivies aren't, en masse, going to suffer due to enrollment decline because they are mostly the top, most desired brands/schools whereas NW Utah State or similarly named schools (and especially small privates) will suffer immensely.

That said, this still may mean fewer kids will be interested in college sports, at least by percentage and certainly the shifting demographics may mean that the B1G and SEC's market share may be high but not as high as they're accustomed to or at least won't continue to grow unchecked and to the solar system--I was gonna say stratosphere but that's not a strong enough metaphor.

The fact is this growth, much like the world population graph for all of history (which makes a sharp vertical curve up in the last 70 years from virtually nothing), is unsustainable regardless of how popular the biggest brands are, especially considering how less popular college sports are compared to the NFL.

And the SEC, and to a much lesser extent the B1G, have a problem in that they are very regional. I mean they're in huge regions, basically the Confederacy and Kentucky for the SEC while the B1G has the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic, Midwest for certain and parts of the West Coast but that's hardly all of the country. Combined, it looks a little better but not all SEC fans will follow the B1G and vice versa and plenty of markets (Virginia) appear to be left out and then markets within supposedly "covered" markets (e.g. DFW, Houston) are left underserved. So this rapid change at the top of college sports (particularly football) is going to have to include most of if not all of the P4 at the very least, and universally the trend of rapid growth will cool, regardless of how many big brands you add, because you will lose plenty of casuals and diehards (like me) if you condense to the most elite brands alone. I have no issue just following the NBA and NFL (and MLB) to get my sports fix and I'm sure many people are of a similar vein.

How long before the P2 becomes the P1? At some point the networks or whatever is going to replace them won’t justify paying the Purdues and the Mississippi States of the world the same as Michigan and Alabama.

As a Penn State grad I’m not worried about the Nittany Lions place in the P1. They’re one of the 20-25 schools that are profitable and actually bring something to the football table. But I’d be very worried if I was an alumni/fan of Missouri, Rutgers, South Carolina, Illinois, Mississippi, Iowa, etc.

(02-24-2024 11:07 AM)kundrky Wrote:  

(02-24-2024 10:02 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  From a major college SPORTS perspective, the demographicc problem it's not that Michigan State or Auburn or Oregon State will have unfilled seats. It's that the Michigan State Class of 2032 might care a whole lot less about whether the Spartans are 8-4 or 11-1 than the class of 2022 or 2012 or 1992.

This is a very underappreciated point. And I think the transfer portal may bring the concerns to the fore more quickly. School and state pride/loyalty has gone out the window. Now, for athletes, it's about who can pay me the most money (or get me the most in the future). If it means they have to transfer every other semester, then so be it. I don't blame them.

We're in a new phase, so the typical fan is still on autopilot, which is why it hasn't been reflected in ratings quite yet. But fans are starting to sense the one-sided loyalty and interest is waning. In my social circle, there has definitely been a shift. And most of my group is Ohio State, Michigan, and Notre Dame fans! We note that OSU's 2002 National Championship team had 82 guys from Ohio on the roster, including nearly all of the key contributors. Today, it's only 51 players, and a lot of those are just depth guys.

Saturdays are no longer blocked out for our team's game, let alone having a casual interest in the rest of the conference/country. Our teenage kids can't even name three players on dad's favorite team. When I was young, I would be in near tears if my team lost and distraught for days. While that's not healthy, it's the passion that drives dollars. I believe the tradition and passion college football is salvageable, and can even get stronger, but I have a lot of doubts about the current trajectory.

Eh - while younger people aren’t the same hardcore fans of teams, I do think the demographic here isn’t quite internalizing that the same younger group is *wildly* more into sports gambling (and it’s a “game” that they have been playing on app for their entire lives). That might not be great for society overall, but sports leagues know that it’s good for them and that’s why they’re all now in bed with gaming companies and actively moving into Vegas when they were trying to be totally abstaining from mixing up until 5 or 6 years ago.

All of the same “passion” issues that you’ve pointed out also apply to the NFL, but that league is stronger than ever. Why? It’s the *casual* fan that rules. It’s the millions of people gambling who have a *direct* vested interest in those games. College football at the top level has a huge advantage where there is a lot of overlap with the attributes that have been making NFL viewership rise when virtually *everything* else on TV has fewer viewers each year. Big event college football is imminently attractive to gambling and that’s a counterweight buoy to how younger people aren’t the same do-or-die sports fans. That gambling audience is young and MUCH MUCH MUCH bigger than the universe of G5 fans.

That’s why what I think what the Big Ten and SEC are doing is going to work… and work well on spades. This is an environment where the *casual* sports fan is king as opposed to the hard core sports fan (and granted that the Big Ten and SEC still have the most hard core fans, too). It sucks for the smaller brands, but the big brands are going to accrue more money and power in the process.

(02-24-2024 09:40 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(02-24-2024 03:32 AM)C2__ Wrote:  And if so when or will it pop?

Fact is, birth rates have been trending downward and this is going come to a head for colleges as soon as about 5 years (give or take) from now because of the lack of domestic births during the Great Recession. These people in the college aged pool are being replaced by immigrants, who can be better students than traditional American students in many cases but don't always have the same skillset or mastery of English as a traditional student, let alone the same interests (including sports). Less or a flat lining population growth rate means, at the very least, colleges likely won't grow. So future subsidy will likely be less, even if it stays the same, because of inflation.

And a higher proportion of non-traditional American students will mean fewer major college sports fans, especially for football. Football participation is already struggling in some parts of the country due to safety concerns, meaning more parents are steering their children away from it and that means, by proportion of programs playing football (which is always growing) there are a smaller pool of players. So the foreign/new American interest will be minimal and the domestic interest could be much smaller in a generation or two. Basketball should be able to suffer less of a fate due to it's global/more universal appeal but it is decidedly less popular in the US ATM.

And if we will have a higher amount of non-traditional Americans, first generation Americans and immigrants as well as a declining traditional American population and declining interest in football, it means days of American football being so popular (by percentage at least) is numbered and if so, these big conferences can't keep expecting explosive growth in TV contracts.

In fact, based on the decline of cable and satellite TV in raw subscription numbers (let alone the percentage) and the ever increasing age and inevitable mortality of Boomers and Gen. Xers and their viewing habits compared to younger people, it's obvious that there's a bubble for the unsustainable rights fees growth for the even most in demand schools. Sure, they'll make money from some of the last holdouts who prefer cable like me and some streamers, who will buy subscriptions to follow at least their own team. But fewer people and fewer people are continuing to watch cable/satellite and while many are streaming more than ever, they won't stream everything for the most part and are unlikely to go chasing a random game, even some involving P4 teams. So there will be less money coming in for everyone, including the P4/2. We'll see what becomes of this joint venture by Fox, Disney and Discovery being challenged by Fubo and if it is a savior for the status quo.

The NFL will be fine, they seem to be able to weather the trends better, although we should expect their general increases to decline some based on the same factors I laid out. But college football? Perhaps only the top 20 or so programs will be able to sustain the constant growth we've seen for decades, even at increasingly reduced levels. But if the seemingly inevitable split is too small and not inclusive enough, it could backfire and kill as much interest as concentrating the best brands brings. I know I won't watch it if Houston is not invited. And did I even mention basketball and other sports much? I'll save it for another post or thread, as this post is long enough.

This TV money is a bigger problem for the P4 (and P2 whose attitude is the money will keep going up, so they leverage their wealth and status to shape the future of college athletics) and less so for the G5 and to an even lesser extent to FCS and below because they aren't so reliant on TV money. But if there are fewer traditional students and if this whole thing about student-athletes becoming employees becomes de jure/statute, then they are in trouble and most AD's will collapse unless the NCAA reduces the number of required sports necessary to compete in D-I and some sports simply return to club sports status. And even that may not be enough to save them, so everyone, even the G5 and below, will have some serious soul searching to do. Few will search for their games and perhaps there will be no more having a captive audience waiting for SportsCenter to come on, meaning even fewer potential viewers.

I think a bubble is bound to pop, if not an outright crash with even the most elite programs shuttering or becoming an eggshell of themselves.

Here’s the thing: is it actually a bubble when sports rights have grown unimpeded since 1980? We have had a version of this story virtually every couple of years: when the Yankees signed a huge rights deal with MSG and Fox way outbid everyone for the NFL in the 1990s, when RSNs and conference networks rose and ESPN was at its household peak in the 2000s, and even people were legitimately questioning whether the Big Ten was making a mistake in taking a short-term TV deal in the mid-2010s as opposed to locking themselves down for the next 15 years like the SEC and ACC. (Seriously - was a common strain that the ACC signed a smarter TV deal than the Big Ten because “Of course the sports rights bubble will pop by 2020!”) All of those “bubble pop” predictions have been proven wrong.

You could argue that sports rights are more like the stock market: there might be hot periods and cold periods, but the overall trajectory is growth over a long period of time.

Now, the important thing about the stock market is that the gains aren’t evenly distributed. We see that in the current rise in the stock market that is largely driven by the “Magnificent Seven” growth stocks at the top - if you look at the value stock and small cap stock categories, they have lagged.

So, the risk isn’t to the P2 at all. The Big Ten and SEC are straight up the most watched sports entities in American sports besides the NFL. They aren’t the ones at risk. It’s the middle class or even upper middle class - like we just saw with Pac-12 - that is most at risk. Mega-stars are still getting paid and that’s true in every facet of the entertainment industry - music (see Taylor Swift), movies (where the studios have a “blockbuster or bust” strategy) and TV (see the top Netflix producer deals).

Now, I fully grant that the tier below that top level is getting squeezed, and the bottom level is just getting paid commodity-level prices. So, it would be fair to say that the gains of the NFL and P2 for rights fees doesn’t mean that the tiers below them will get any gains, just as the gains for Taylor Swift and Shonda Rhimes do nothing for the musicians and entertainment producers below them. That is a real issue in the economy overall where the gains are increasingly concentrated at the top while the middle gets squeezed. That is less of a sports rights issue and more of an across-the-board global economic issue.

As for enrollment trends, while it’s true that the overall college-aged population is heading toward a cliff, anyone that has dealt with college admissions for the past 5 years knows that the same superstar dichotomy that I described above has hit academia. The brand name schools are getting more applications and having higher demand than EVER. This includes most major flagship schools, which directly overlap with the P4 membership. So, the P4 schools are NOT the ones facing enrollment issues. They’re the ones actually benefiting the most (along with elite schools like the Ivies) from a “flight to quality” in the college enrollment space. All of those Big Ten and SEC schools that might have been looked at as backup schools for top students in the past no longer have enrollment standards that are anywhere close to backup metrics anymore.

(If you want to understand the bloodbath on how hard it is to get into a brand name school right now - and I’m talking “brand names” like Wisconsin, Maryland and Texas A&M, much less the Ivies - take a look at the Applying to College Reddit page. Anyone that attended a P4 school on this forum should thank their lucky stars that they’re not applying to their schools today because most of us probably wouldn’t have stand a chance to get in now. Most of the P4 schools could lose half of the applications that they receive now and still be more selective than they were 10 years ago.)

I feel like I should just bookmark this post and link to it when people say "but, but, the bubble will pop soon and then we're all doooooooomeedd!!". Live sports are fundamentally more valuable today than ever before, and it's reasonable that they'll continue to appreciate as a whole in a market in which basically every other show on TV is just as easy to watch on your Tivo as it is live, and often better that way. Live sports is a destination event. Not just the Super Bowl, but the NBA finals/playoffs, MLB playoffs, major college football games between titans of the game, world cup soccer, Champions League, the NCAAT, etc etc etc. All of it is destination TV, everybody wants to watch it live and that makes it enormously more valuable than every other type of program as a means to drive revenue for any broadcaster, whether they're OTA, online, or on the moon.

The only way that sports revenues dwindle is when/if people stop caring about them. That could happen tomorrow, or next year, or next century, but what's more likely to happen is more like what has happened to malls. They quit growing and expanding, but just as many people, perhaps a bit more than ever, still go to them. But as a % of the overall market they're not as large. So, perhaps sports revenues start to level off in the long term, but their fundamental support is solid across sports and across regions the world over, and they're highly unlikely to just fall off a cliff one day. Could we see some leveling off due to ESPN no longer spending stupid amounts of money on content that nobody else wants, or nobody else wants very much? Sure, that could happen, and it probably will, but it won't impact the long term trend of increasing value in media rights.

(02-24-2024 09:40 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(02-24-2024 03:32 AM)C2__ Wrote:  And if so when or will it pop?

Fact is, birth rates have been trending downward and this is going come to a head for colleges as soon as about 5 years (give or take) from now because of the lack of domestic births during the Great Recession. These people in the college aged pool are being replaced by immigrants, who can be better students than traditional American students in many cases but don't always have the same skillset or mastery of English as a traditional student, let alone the same interests (including sports). Less or a flat lining population growth rate means, at the very least, colleges likely won't grow. So future subsidy will likely be less, even if it stays the same, because of inflation.

And a higher proportion of non-traditional American students will mean fewer major college sports fans, especially for football. Football participation is already struggling in some parts of the country due to safety concerns, meaning more parents are steering their children away from it and that means, by proportion of programs playing football (which is always growing) there are a smaller pool of players. So the foreign/new American interest will be minimal and the domestic interest could be much smaller in a generation or two. Basketball should be able to suffer less of a fate due to it's global/more universal appeal but it is decidedly less popular in the US ATM.

And if we will have a higher amount of non-traditional Americans, first generation Americans and immigrants as well as a declining traditional American population and declining interest in football, it means days of American football being so popular (by percentage at least) is numbered and if so, these big conferences can't keep expecting explosive growth in TV contracts.

In fact, based on the decline of cable and satellite TV in raw subscription numbers (let alone the percentage) and the ever increasing age and inevitable mortality of Boomers and Gen. Xers and their viewing habits compared to younger people, it's obvious that there's a bubble for the unsustainable rights fees growth for the even most in demand schools. Sure, they'll make money from some of the last holdouts who prefer cable like me and some streamers, who will buy subscriptions to follow at least their own team. But fewer people and fewer people are continuing to watch cable/satellite and while many are streaming more than ever, they won't stream everything for the most part and are unlikely to go chasing a random game, even some involving P4 teams. So there will be less money coming in for everyone, including the P4/2. We'll see what becomes of this joint venture by Fox, Disney and Discovery being challenged by Fubo and if it is a savior for the status quo.

The NFL will be fine, they seem to be able to weather the trends better, although we should expect their general increases to decline some based on the same factors I laid out. But college football? Perhaps only the top 20 or so programs will be able to sustain the constant growth we've seen for decades, even at increasingly reduced levels. But if the seemingly inevitable split is too small and not inclusive enough, it could backfire and kill as much interest as concentrating the best brands brings. I know I won't watch it if Houston is not invited. And did I even mention basketball and other sports much? I'll save it for another post or thread, as this post is long enough.

This TV money is a bigger problem for the P4 (and P2 whose attitude is the money will keep going up, so they leverage their wealth and status to shape the future of college athletics) and less so for the G5 and to an even lesser extent to FCS and below because they aren't so reliant on TV money. But if there are fewer traditional students and if this whole thing about student-athletes becoming employees becomes de jure/statute, then they are in trouble and most AD's will collapse unless the NCAA reduces the number of required sports necessary to compete in D-I and some sports simply return to club sports status. And even that may not be enough to save them, so everyone, even the G5 and below, will have some serious soul searching to do. Few will search for their games and perhaps there will be no more having a captive audience waiting for SportsCenter to come on, meaning even fewer potential viewers.

I think a bubble is bound to pop, if not an outright crash with even the most elite programs shuttering or becoming an eggshell of themselves.

Here’s the thing: is it actually a bubble when sports rights have grown unimpeded since 1980? We have had a version of this story virtually every couple of years: when the Yankees signed a huge rights deal with MSG and Fox way outbid everyone for the NFL in the 1990s, when RSNs and conference networks rose and ESPN was at its household peak in the 2000s, and even people were legitimately questioning whether the Big Ten was making a mistake in taking a short-term TV deal in the mid-2010s as opposed to locking themselves down for the next 15 years like the SEC and ACC. (Seriously - was a common strain that the ACC signed a smarter TV deal than the Big Ten because “Of course the sports rights bubble will pop by 2020!”) All of those “bubble pop” predictions have been proven wrong.

You could argue that sports rights are more like the stock market: there might be hot periods and cold periods, but the overall trajectory is growth over a long period of time.

Now, the important thing about the stock market is that the gains aren’t evenly distributed. We see that in the current rise in the stock market that is largely driven by the “Magnificent Seven” growth stocks at the top - if you look at the value stock and small cap stock categories, they have lagged.

To go with your thesis here the money supply over the last 40 years has increased and over time that is the biggest inflating aspect as it relates to money and contracts.

The music industry has faced a near absolute contraction. Downloading ate into record sales at first. That led to the closure of record stores which for a lot of groups having something in the record store was their main form of marketing. Then you can't build a new base of fans if there is no way to market and eventually everything was pushed into streaming services where 10 million plays only nets you 30,000 dollars. The economics changed, the label investment stopped happening.

Even Jay-Z has stopped putting out records because they won't sell anything. Him and Diddy are the P2 of rap and can't do 500,000 anymore because of today's music economics. Taylor Swift is making money because she is touring. However name value is hard to engender in music without the traditional marketing avenues (record stores, national TV airplay). There really is no music "scene" or trends that are discernable.

The money can dry up at some point.

I think many are underestimating the effect of on demand ad-free streaming on people's viewing habits. The younger generation expect to see their content available immediately without adds. The whole idea that you have to wait for something to come on live and you have to sit through tons of commercials is not going to fly.

Viewers are going to be like screw this, I am going to spend the next 2 hours checking out that new movie on max or that new show on Netflix. I will record the game and watch it later, and fast forward through the slow stuff.

(02-24-2024 04:38 PM)Garden_KC Wrote:  

(02-24-2024 09:40 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(02-24-2024 03:32 AM)C2__ Wrote:  And if so when or will it pop?

Fact is, birth rates have been trending downward and this is going come to a head for colleges as soon as about 5 years (give or take) from now because of the lack of domestic births during the Great Recession. These people in the college aged pool are being replaced by immigrants, who can be better students than traditional American students in many cases but don't always have the same skillset or mastery of English as a traditional student, let alone the same interests (including sports). Less or a flat lining population growth rate means, at the very least, colleges likely won't grow. So future subsidy will likely be less, even if it stays the same, because of inflation.

And a higher proportion of non-traditional American students will mean fewer major college sports fans, especially for football. Football participation is already struggling in some parts of the country due to safety concerns, meaning more parents are steering their children away from it and that means, by proportion of programs playing football (which is always growing) there are a smaller pool of players. So the foreign/new American interest will be minimal and the domestic interest could be much smaller in a generation or two. Basketball should be able to suffer less of a fate due to it's global/more universal appeal but it is decidedly less popular in the US ATM.

And if we will have a higher amount of non-traditional Americans, first generation Americans and immigrants as well as a declining traditional American population and declining interest in football, it means days of American football being so popular (by percentage at least) is numbered and if so, these big conferences can't keep expecting explosive growth in TV contracts.

In fact, based on the decline of cable and satellite TV in raw subscription numbers (let alone the percentage) and the ever increasing age and inevitable mortality of Boomers and Gen. Xers and their viewing habits compared to younger people, it's obvious that there's a bubble for the unsustainable rights fees growth for the even most in demand schools. Sure, they'll make money from some of the last holdouts who prefer cable like me and some streamers, who will buy subscriptions to follow at least their own team. But fewer people and fewer people are continuing to watch cable/satellite and while many are streaming more than ever, they won't stream everything for the most part and are unlikely to go chasing a random game, even some involving P4 teams. So there will be less money coming in for everyone, including the P4/2. We'll see what becomes of this joint venture by Fox, Disney and Discovery being challenged by Fubo and if it is a savior for the status quo.

The NFL will be fine, they seem to be able to weather the trends better, although we should expect their general increases to decline some based on the same factors I laid out. But college football? Perhaps only the top 20 or so programs will be able to sustain the constant growth we've seen for decades, even at increasingly reduced levels. But if the seemingly inevitable split is too small and not inclusive enough, it could backfire and kill as much interest as concentrating the best brands brings. I know I won't watch it if Houston is not invited. And did I even mention basketball and other sports much? I'll save it for another post or thread, as this post is long enough.

This TV money is a bigger problem for the P4 (and P2 whose attitude is the money will keep going up, so they leverage their wealth and status to shape the future of college athletics) and less so for the G5 and to an even lesser extent to FCS and below because they aren't so reliant on TV money. But if there are fewer traditional students and if this whole thing about student-athletes becoming employees becomes de jure/statute, then they are in trouble and most AD's will collapse unless the NCAA reduces the number of required sports necessary to compete in D-I and some sports simply return to club sports status. And even that may not be enough to save them, so everyone, even the G5 and below, will have some serious soul searching to do. Few will search for their games and perhaps there will be no more having a captive audience waiting for SportsCenter to come on, meaning even fewer potential viewers.

I think a bubble is bound to pop, if not an outright crash with even the most elite programs shuttering or becoming an eggshell of themselves.

Here’s the thing: is it actually a bubble when sports rights have grown unimpeded since 1980? We have had a version of this story virtually every couple of years: when the Yankees signed a huge rights deal with MSG and Fox way outbid everyone for the NFL in the 1990s, when RSNs and conference networks rose and ESPN was at its household peak in the 2000s, and even people were legitimately questioning whether the Big Ten was making a mistake in taking a short-term TV deal in the mid-2010s as opposed to locking themselves down for the next 15 years like the SEC and ACC. (Seriously - was a common strain that the ACC signed a smarter TV deal than the Big Ten because “Of course the sports rights bubble will pop by 2020!”) All of those “bubble pop” predictions have been proven wrong.

You could argue that sports rights are more like the stock market: there might be hot periods and cold periods, but the overall trajectory is growth over a long period of time.

Now, the important thing about the stock market is that the gains aren’t evenly distributed. We see that in the current rise in the stock market that is largely driven by the “Magnificent Seven” growth stocks at the top - if you look at the value stock and small cap stock categories, they have lagged.

To go with your thesis here the money supply over the last 40 years has increased and over time that is the biggest inflating aspect as it relates to money and contracts.

The music industry has faced a near absolute contraction. Downloading ate into record sales at first. That led to the closure of record stores which for a lot of groups having something in the record store was their main form of marketing. Then you can't build a new base of fans if there is no way to market and eventually everything was pushed into streaming services where 10 million plays only nets you 30,000 dollars. The economics changed, the label investment stopped happening.

Even Jay-Z has stopped putting out records because they won't sell anything. Him and Diddy are the P2 of rap and can't do 500,000 anymore because of today's music economics. Taylor Swift is making money because she is touring. However name value is hard to engender in music without the traditional marketing avenues (record stores, national TV airplay). There really is no music "scene" or trends that are discernable.

The money can dry up at some point.

Artists still have plenty of ways to make money these days, they're just less focused on straight record sales and more focused on touring/crossovers/appearing in other people's albums as cross promotions/etc etc etc. Official Youtube Accounts ofc, too. And the reason that they can still make money is that people care about them. A lot of people care about Taylor Swift or JayZ, far fewer care about some random 1 hit wonder from the 90s, but people still care. For JayZ, he's already a billionaire, it's not worth it for him to tour b/c he makes more money now as a businessman. For Sting, Justin Bieber, or numerous other artists, they could just sell their entire catalogue for upwards of $200m. That kind of money was impossible to dream about for just about anybody a couple decades ago, now it happens well, maybe not all the time, but often enough that it's not big news if Selena Gomez or Ed Sheeran or David Bowie gets his 9 figure deal for the entire catalogue, either. So, yeah, plenty of money to be made, just not in the same old way as before.

All of the above could actually serve as a good way to view the medium to long term of CFB. Today, there's a ton to be made from stupid rich boosters and sports networks with cash to burn, perhaps tomorrow they have to rely more on ticket sales, or live player and coach meet and greets with wealthy potential boosters (already happening), etc etc etc. But, as I said above, as long as a lot of people care about the sports, there will be money to be made somehow. The real danger for football is something like the concussion thing, or perhaps just a general shift in future generations away from gladiatorial combat and towards more skill-based, or at least less combat-based sports like Basketball or Soccer, or perhaps new stuff on the horizon like pickleball.

(02-24-2024 10:11 AM)pvk75 Wrote:  Some of the population and populace profile factors that C2__ mentioned … such as cultural and historical disinterest vis-à-vis football … might also trigger another trend. That is, that these “new” students may not be willing to pay a “tax” of mandatory student athletic fees that support many of the universities’ sports programs. Add the issue of potentially paying student-athlete-employees, and the non-athlete students may really question why they’re paying those fees.

For some of these schools (see the Knight Commission reports) athletic fees can range up to 60-70% of their revenues. (At NIU, for example, the fee revenues range from 20-30%. Also note NIU is struggling with stagnant enrollment, which further constrains fee revenue. I do not think NIU is atypical per mid-majors/G5, having perused the Knight data.) These universities don’t have the big OTA/streaming revenues that many of the P4/M2 schools have.

As a footnote, if the P4/M2 broadcast revenues are also subject to a bursting or deflating “bubble,” that could also put the squeeze on other schools’ revenues from so-called “payday” games. Of course, depending on how many breakaway schools there could be, they might not need to play the G5.

The whole concept of moving up in athletics is taking a big shot across the bow.

Five years ago when players had to sit out to transfer and couldn't do NIL deals all the additional revenue increase went to the conferences/schools. More money and a school could level up its coaching salaries to be more nationally competitive.

Now that money is being redirected into NIL and the higher a program moves up the higher percentage is expected to be redirected toward it, effectively choking off the cash flow going into the athletic department. A lot of alums are simply going to walk away from donating into a NIL collective.

Thus something like a superdivision where it sets a baseline of NIL contributions or reclassifying student athletes as employees but paying them minimum wage instead of giving them full rides and then on top of that giving them NIL money might be the way most of D1 can stay in business.

Moving down to cut travel costs and smaller sport requirements seems appealing when the potential of media income isn't there. Pay a smaller group of 150-200 athletes minimum wage for playing at the university. That's 6 million dollars and a lot of smaller schools can handle that. Plus operational costs they can get by with an athletic department budget of 12 million a year.

G5 will probably all opt with the superdivision. G5 is all about playing a game of chicken daring the other school to make a move down so they don't have the recruiting competition anymore. MAC already has a small travel footprint. It will be more expensive to stay FBS but they will do it anyways.

(02-24-2024 05:06 PM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  

(02-24-2024 04:38 PM)Garden_KC Wrote:  

(02-24-2024 09:40 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(02-24-2024 03:32 AM)C2__ Wrote:  And if so when or will it pop?

Fact is, birth rates have been trending downward and this is going come to a head for colleges as soon as about 5 years (give or take) from now because of the lack of domestic births during the Great Recession. These people in the college aged pool are being replaced by immigrants, who can be better students than traditional American students in many cases but don't always have the same skillset or mastery of English as a traditional student, let alone the same interests (including sports). Less or a flat lining population growth rate means, at the very least, colleges likely won't grow. So future subsidy will likely be less, even if it stays the same, because of inflation.

And a higher proportion of non-traditional American students will mean fewer major college sports fans, especially for football. Football participation is already struggling in some parts of the country due to safety concerns, meaning more parents are steering their children away from it and that means, by proportion of programs playing football (which is always growing) there are a smaller pool of players. So the foreign/new American interest will be minimal and the domestic interest could be much smaller in a generation or two. Basketball should be able to suffer less of a fate due to it's global/more universal appeal but it is decidedly less popular in the US ATM.

And if we will have a higher amount of non-traditional Americans, first generation Americans and immigrants as well as a declining traditional American population and declining interest in football, it means days of American football being so popular (by percentage at least) is numbered and if so, these big conferences can't keep expecting explosive growth in TV contracts.

In fact, based on the decline of cable and satellite TV in raw subscription numbers (let alone the percentage) and the ever increasing age and inevitable mortality of Boomers and Gen. Xers and their viewing habits compared to younger people, it's obvious that there's a bubble for the unsustainable rights fees growth for the even most in demand schools. Sure, they'll make money from some of the last holdouts who prefer cable like me and some streamers, who will buy subscriptions to follow at least their own team. But fewer people and fewer people are continuing to watch cable/satellite and while many are streaming more than ever, they won't stream everything for the most part and are unlikely to go chasing a random game, even some involving P4 teams. So there will be less money coming in for everyone, including the P4/2. We'll see what becomes of this joint venture by Fox, Disney and Discovery being challenged by Fubo and if it is a savior for the status quo.

The NFL will be fine, they seem to be able to weather the trends better, although we should expect their general increases to decline some based on the same factors I laid out. But college football? Perhaps only the top 20 or so programs will be able to sustain the constant growth we've seen for decades, even at increasingly reduced levels. But if the seemingly inevitable split is too small and not inclusive enough, it could backfire and kill as much interest as concentrating the best brands brings. I know I won't watch it if Houston is not invited. And did I even mention basketball and other sports much? I'll save it for another post or thread, as this post is long enough.

This TV money is a bigger problem for the P4 (and P2 whose attitude is the money will keep going up, so they leverage their wealth and status to shape the future of college athletics) and less so for the G5 and to an even lesser extent to FCS and below because they aren't so reliant on TV money. But if there are fewer traditional students and if this whole thing about student-athletes becoming employees becomes de jure/statute, then they are in trouble and most AD's will collapse unless the NCAA reduces the number of required sports necessary to compete in D-I and some sports simply return to club sports status. And even that may not be enough to save them, so everyone, even the G5 and below, will have some serious soul searching to do. Few will search for their games and perhaps there will be no more having a captive audience waiting for SportsCenter to come on, meaning even fewer potential viewers.

I think a bubble is bound to pop, if not an outright crash with even the most elite programs shuttering or becoming an eggshell of themselves.

Here’s the thing: is it actually a bubble when sports rights have grown unimpeded since 1980? We have had a version of this story virtually every couple of years: when the Yankees signed a huge rights deal with MSG and Fox way outbid everyone for the NFL in the 1990s, when RSNs and conference networks rose and ESPN was at its household peak in the 2000s, and even people were legitimately questioning whether the Big Ten was making a mistake in taking a short-term TV deal in the mid-2010s as opposed to locking themselves down for the next 15 years like the SEC and ACC. (Seriously - was a common strain that the ACC signed a smarter TV deal than the Big Ten because “Of course the sports rights bubble will pop by 2020!”) All of those “bubble pop” predictions have been proven wrong.

You could argue that sports rights are more like the stock market: there might be hot periods and cold periods, but the overall trajectory is growth over a long period of time.

Now, the important thing about the stock market is that the gains aren’t evenly distributed. We see that in the current rise in the stock market that is largely driven by the “Magnificent Seven” growth stocks at the top - if you look at the value stock and small cap stock categories, they have lagged.

To go with your thesis here the money supply over the last 40 years has increased and over time that is the biggest inflating aspect as it relates to money and contracts.

The music industry has faced a near absolute contraction. Downloading ate into record sales at first. That led to the closure of record stores which for a lot of groups having something in the record store was their main form of marketing. Then you can't build a new base of fans if there is no way to market and eventually everything was pushed into streaming services where 10 million plays only nets you 30,000 dollars. The economics changed, the label investment stopped happening.

Even Jay-Z has stopped putting out records because they won't sell anything. Him and Diddy are the P2 of rap and can't do 500,000 anymore because of today's music economics. Taylor Swift is making money because she is touring. However name value is hard to engender in music without the traditional marketing avenues (record stores, national TV airplay). There really is no music "scene" or trends that are discernable.

The money can dry up at some point.

Artists still have plenty of ways to make money these days, they're just less focused on straight record sales and more focused on touring/crossovers/appearing in other people's albums as cross promotions/etc etc etc. Official Youtube Accounts ofc, too. And the reason that they can still make money is that people care about them. A lot of people care about Taylor Swift or JayZ, far fewer care about some random 1 hit wonder from the 90s, but people still care. For JayZ, he's already a billionaire, it's not worth it for him to tour b/c he makes more money now as a businessman. For Sting, Justin Bieber, or numerous other artists, they could just sell their entire catalogue for upwards of $200m. That kind of money was impossible to dream about for just about anybody a couple decades ago, now it happens well, maybe not all the time, but often enough that it's not big news if Selena Gomez or Ed Sheeran or David Bowie gets his 9 figure deal for the entire catalogue, either. So, yeah, plenty of money to be made, just not in the same old way as before.

All of the above could actually serve as a good way to view the medium to long term of CFB. Today, there's a ton to be made from stupid rich boosters and sports networks with cash to burn, perhaps tomorrow they have to rely more on ticket sales, or live player and coach meet and greets with wealthy potential boosters (already happening), etc etc etc. But, as I said above, as long as a lot of people care about the sports, there will be money to be made somehow. The real danger for football is something like the concussion thing, or perhaps just a general shift in future generations away from gladiatorial combat and towards more skill-based, or at least less combat-based sports like Basketball or Soccer, or perhaps new stuff on the horizon like pickleball.

The stars you are mentioning didn't build their names in the 2020s. Aside from a scant amount of youtube stars musicians aren't becoming stars. Yeah if you had money from the past you can grow it but that is a different subject entirely.

You can see how much fans of D1 basketball have hallowed out over the past 20 years. Fan support is about 50% of what it was once you get below the Top 10 conferences. The fanbase realized it couldn't compete in D1 and decided to tune out on it. There are individual cases like Houston where they've become one of the very top teams in the country and that has driven up support but for most out there which are just average D1 basketball teams its been a decline in interest.

Fans on this board tend to be older and have not given up on their teams yet. The reality has not set it that it will only become more difficult over time to compete. Any additional TV money will be going to compensate players and in-game attendance will continue to dwindle. Lack of expendable income in future generations with high cost of living will remove college sports expenditures from the radar.

(02-24-2024 05:30 PM)Garden_KC Wrote:  

(02-24-2024 05:06 PM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  

(02-24-2024 04:38 PM)Garden_KC Wrote:  

(02-24-2024 09:40 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(02-24-2024 03:32 AM)C2__ Wrote:  And if so when or will it pop?

Fact is, birth rates have been trending downward and this is going come to a head for colleges as soon as about 5 years (give or take) from now because of the lack of domestic births during the Great Recession. These people in the college aged pool are being replaced by immigrants, who can be better students than traditional American students in many cases but don't always have the same skillset or mastery of English as a traditional student, let alone the same interests (including sports). Less or a flat lining population growth rate means, at the very least, colleges likely won't grow. So future subsidy will likely be less, even if it stays the same, because of inflation.

And a higher proportion of non-traditional American students will mean fewer major college sports fans, especially for football. Football participation is already struggling in some parts of the country due to safety concerns, meaning more parents are steering their children away from it and that means, by proportion of programs playing football (which is always growing) there are a smaller pool of players. So the foreign/new American interest will be minimal and the domestic interest could be much smaller in a generation or two. Basketball should be able to suffer less of a fate due to it's global/more universal appeal but it is decidedly less popular in the US ATM.

And if we will have a higher amount of non-traditional Americans, first generation Americans and immigrants as well as a declining traditional American population and declining interest in football, it means days of American football being so popular (by percentage at least) is numbered and if so, these big conferences can't keep expecting explosive growth in TV contracts.

In fact, based on the decline of cable and satellite TV in raw subscription numbers (let alone the percentage) and the ever increasing age and inevitable mortality of Boomers and Gen. Xers and their viewing habits compared to younger people, it's obvious that there's a bubble for the unsustainable rights fees growth for the even most in demand schools. Sure, they'll make money from some of the last holdouts who prefer cable like me and some streamers, who will buy subscriptions to follow at least their own team. But fewer people and fewer people are continuing to watch cable/satellite and while many are streaming more than ever, they won't stream everything for the most part and are unlikely to go chasing a random game, even some involving P4 teams. So there will be less money coming in for everyone, including the P4/2. We'll see what becomes of this joint venture by Fox, Disney and Discovery being challenged by Fubo and if it is a savior for the status quo.

The NFL will be fine, they seem to be able to weather the trends better, although we should expect their general increases to decline some based on the same factors I laid out. But college football? Perhaps only the top 20 or so programs will be able to sustain the constant growth we've seen for decades, even at increasingly reduced levels. But if the seemingly inevitable split is too small and not inclusive enough, it could backfire and kill as much interest as concentrating the best brands brings. I know I won't watch it if Houston is not invited. And did I even mention basketball and other sports much? I'll save it for another post or thread, as this post is long enough.

This TV money is a bigger problem for the P4 (and P2 whose attitude is the money will keep going up, so they leverage their wealth and status to shape the future of college athletics) and less so for the G5 and to an even lesser extent to FCS and below because they aren't so reliant on TV money. But if there are fewer traditional students and if this whole thing about student-athletes becoming employees becomes de jure/statute, then they are in trouble and most AD's will collapse unless the NCAA reduces the number of required sports necessary to compete in D-I and some sports simply return to club sports status. And even that may not be enough to save them, so everyone, even the G5 and below, will have some serious soul searching to do. Few will search for their games and perhaps there will be no more having a captive audience waiting for SportsCenter to come on, meaning even fewer potential viewers.

I think a bubble is bound to pop, if not an outright crash with even the most elite programs shuttering or becoming an eggshell of themselves.

Here’s the thing: is it actually a bubble when sports rights have grown unimpeded since 1980? We have had a version of this story virtually every couple of years: when the Yankees signed a huge rights deal with MSG and Fox way outbid everyone for the NFL in the 1990s, when RSNs and conference networks rose and ESPN was at its household peak in the 2000s, and even people were legitimately questioning whether the Big Ten was making a mistake in taking a short-term TV deal in the mid-2010s as opposed to locking themselves down for the next 15 years like the SEC and ACC. (Seriously - was a common strain that the ACC signed a smarter TV deal than the Big Ten because “Of course the sports rights bubble will pop by 2020!”) All of those “bubble pop” predictions have been proven wrong.

You could argue that sports rights are more like the stock market: there might be hot periods and cold periods, but the overall trajectory is growth over a long period of time.

Now, the important thing about the stock market is that the gains aren’t evenly distributed. We see that in the current rise in the stock market that is largely driven by the “Magnificent Seven” growth stocks at the top - if you look at the value stock and small cap stock categories, they have lagged.

To go with your thesis here the money supply over the last 40 years has increased and over time that is the biggest inflating aspect as it relates to money and contracts.

The music industry has faced a near absolute contraction. Downloading ate into record sales at first. That led to the closure of record stores which for a lot of groups having something in the record store was their main form of marketing. Then you can't build a new base of fans if there is no way to market and eventually everything was pushed into streaming services where 10 million plays only nets you 30,000 dollars. The economics changed, the label investment stopped happening.

Even Jay-Z has stopped putting out records because they won't sell anything. Him and Diddy are the P2 of rap and can't do 500,000 anymore because of today's music economics. Taylor Swift is making money because she is touring. However name value is hard to engender in music without the traditional marketing avenues (record stores, national TV airplay). There really is no music "scene" or trends that are discernable.

The money can dry up at some point.

Artists still have plenty of ways to make money these days, they're just less focused on straight record sales and more focused on touring/crossovers/appearing in other people's albums as cross promotions/etc etc etc. Official Youtube Accounts ofc, too. And the reason that they can still make money is that people care about them. A lot of people care about Taylor Swift or JayZ, far fewer care about some random 1 hit wonder from the 90s, but people still care. For JayZ, he's already a billionaire, it's not worth it for him to tour b/c he makes more money now as a businessman. For Sting, Justin Bieber, or numerous other artists, they could just sell their entire catalogue for upwards of $200m. That kind of money was impossible to dream about for just about anybody a couple decades ago, now it happens well, maybe not all the time, but often enough that it's not big news if Selena Gomez or Ed Sheeran or David Bowie gets his 9 figure deal for the entire catalogue, either. So, yeah, plenty of money to be made, just not in the same old way as before.

All of the above could actually serve as a good way to view the medium to long term of CFB. Today, there's a ton to be made from stupid rich boosters and sports networks with cash to burn, perhaps tomorrow they have to rely more on ticket sales, or live player and coach meet and greets with wealthy potential boosters (already happening), etc etc etc. But, as I said above, as long as a lot of people care about the sports, there will be money to be made somehow. The real danger for football is something like the concussion thing, or perhaps just a general shift in future generations away from gladiatorial combat and towards more skill-based, or at least less combat-based sports like Basketball or Soccer, or perhaps new stuff on the horizon like pickleball.

The stars you are mentioning didn't build their names in the 2020s. Aside from a scant amount of youtube stars musicians aren't becoming stars. Yeah if you had money from the past you can grow it but that is a different subject entirely.

You can see how much fans of D1 basketball have hallowed out over the past 20 years. Fan support is about 50% of what it was once you get below the Top 10 conferences. The fanbase realized it couldn't compete in D1 and decided to tune out on it. There are individual cases like Houston where they've become one of the very top teams in the country and that has driven up support but for most out there which are just average D1 basketball teams its been a decline in interest.

Fans on this board tend to be older and have not given up on their teams yet. The reality has not set it that it will only become more difficult over time to compete. Any additional TV money will be going to compensate players and in-game attendance will continue to dwindle. Lack of expendable income in future generations with high cost of living will remove college sports expenditures from the radar.

Do you have stats for this or is this just what you seem to have noticed?

I think sports will always have a place in people's heart, even if it's just about school/civic/state/regional pride. Unless the supposed P2 really screw things up (by how they split, not just splitting if they do do [sic] that), the biggest brands will, at the very least, have fans in droves, even if not as many by percentage as the past.

I think maybe in 10 years. The biggest sticking point is going to be streaming. Would conferences want to bundle streaming rights should ota become lower. Would it be better to be part of a all sports streaming service or tag your conference to something like peacock or Paramount+. Going to a service like Paramount+ might be a easier sell to a family then ESPN+. At least you get CBS content. If peacock and Paramount merge (I think I remember hearing about it) it might make going to the new service better for conferences especially with WWE new deal with Netflix. Assuming Wwe deal with Netflix then they may look for sports.

(02-25-2024 08:14 PM)46566 Wrote:  I think maybe in 10 years. The biggest sticking point is going to be streaming. Would conferences want to bundle streaming rights should ota become lower. Would it be better to be part of a all sports streaming service or tag your conference to something like peacock or Paramount+. Going to a service like Paramount+ might be a easier sell to a family then ESPN+. At least you get CBS content. If peacock and Paramount merge (I think I remember hearing about it) it might make going to the new service better for conferences especially with WWE new deal with Netflix. Assuming Wwe deal with Netflix then they may look for sports.

That's been a suggestion and proposal on this board. In reality, neither is looking to merge their streaming services, let alone their entire operations (not that you implied that), at least as far as I know.