(02-27-2013 11:06 AM)S11 Wrote:  

(02-27-2013 10:35 AM)Topkat Wrote:  

(02-27-2013 10:28 AM)S11 Wrote:  

(02-27-2013 10:17 AM)HuskieJohn Wrote:  

(02-27-2013 09:51 AM)S11 Wrote:  Attendance is sometimes a good indicator but you certainly have significant outliers.

Boise has 36k, ECU has 50k but pretty much everyone except Pirate homers would agree that BSU is by far the bigger and more valuable brand.

Miami has 45k and ISU has 55k but nobody thinks the Cyclones pack as much tv punch as Da U.

So it's one of many metrics.

How about the NCAA forces all FBS teams to count actual attendance in the stands...who paid to get in.

1- Point still stands and might be even more evident based on the pic.

2- That's a 75k seat stadium and they reported 39k. So the expectation is that it's half-empty.

LOL... you should probably focus attendance #'s on the top 4-5 schools in the standings of each conference in a given year.

Those are the ones that get the bulk of the tv time prime slots.

Lets just say some of the bottom half schools get defensive when questioned about their "reported" attendance #'s.

I was pointing out anomalies that show the neccessity for other metrics. Miami and Boise are two very good examples.

I agree. But for the thread topic and attempted correlation, the 600lb gorilla is reported attendance.

And what this comes back to is that in general attendance does matter greatly because it's an indicator of how many people are truly interested in your program. If 75-80k fans are interested enough to attend football games every Saturday then it certainly stands to reason that at a minimum there are 2-3 times that number that care to varying degrees and will watch at least casually. If the average league attendance for the Big East was 50-60k instead of 30k (and that's an inflated number) the league would be worth multiple times more than it's worth right now. The only things that are going to change what happened to the Big East are to win games and fill stadiums and do both consistently for the life of this crappy TV deal. If at the end of the deal the leagues average attendance has risen to 40k and the league was a 4 bid a year league in basketball and got the GO5 bid 3 or 4 of the 6 years it will be worth a lot more.

(02-27-2013 11:13 AM)b0ndsj0ns Wrote:  And what this comes back to is that in general attendance does matter greatly because it's an indicator of how many people are truly interested in your program. If 75-80k fans are interested enough to attend football games every Saturday then it certainly stands to reason that at a minimum there are 2-3 times that number that care to varying degrees and will watch at least casually. If the average league attendance for the Big East was 50-60k instead of 30k (and that's an inflated number) the league would be worth multiple times more than it's worth right now. The only things that are going to change what happened to the Big East are to win games and fill stadiums and do both consistently for the life of this crappy TV deal. If at the end of the deal the leagues average attendance has risen to 40k and the league was a 4 bid a year league in basketball and got the GO5 bid 3 or 4 of the 6 years it will be worth a lot more.

1- Attendance could be the result of a small but very local following. If a school has a smaller but very regionally concentrated alumni base attendance would be high but tv appeal may not be that high.

There are demographics that go in to play that can skew things.

2- You can make similar assumptions based on cross referencing tv ratings and alumni numbers and reach very different conclusions. There isn't one perfect metric.

Correctly evaluating brands will look a little at attendance but recent winning %, history of large viewership, big nationally relevant wins, and how elastic their viewership is with good and bad years probably factor in more than attendance. It's why Miami and Boise are tv gold and schools like Miss State, Kentucky, ISU, NC State, and others aren't despite being 10-20k more attended.

(02-27-2013 11:04 AM)PaulDel2 Wrote:  The TV deals are based upon 2 things and attendance is NOT one of the driving forces. There is a base value determined by the number of TV sets, i.e. market. Then here is the premium based upon the conference's "brand".

TV executives don't care how many people are in the stands, they want you at home with the tube on.

I think TV deals are based pretty purely on ratings history, with some premium for large markets (i.e. potential ratings.) That's why a Rutgers is more valuable than their history and attendance would suggest, because they come with a "lottery ticket."

But those ratings are an expression of how much draw those teams have. And, generally speaking, attendance also reflects that drawing power. Sometimes local and national drawing power are mismatched, but let's say 90% of schools with a 5-year average reported home attendance of 40,000-50,000 will be in the same ratings range. You could have a Miami with much better TV ratings, and maybe an ECU with much lower ratings, but I'd expect most schools in that range would cluster around the same ratings levels.

I singled out ECU because, as a non-AQ team whose attendance has gone up dramatically in the last 5 years or so, they're the most likely to have attendance that's much better than their TV draw. (I've seen the Undaunted PDF, and I was impressed.) I don't think ECU's general drawing power has increased that much in the last 5 years or so, so either they're overperforming now in attendance, or they were underperforming not-so-long ago when they had 30,000 or so in the stands.

Miami and Boise are outliers but for the same reason: they were both small nobody schools that came out if nowhere and rewrote the power structure (especially Miami to the tune of multiple national titles)

This underdog who becomes the cool winner inflated both schools physical fan bases and TV numbers well beyond what a small private and small MW team should normally be able to accomplish.

But we have to treat success like a multiplier. IOW, lets take one of those teams mentioned like KSU who average 45-50K right now. What if in 1998 K-State won the Big 12, got the number 1 ranking and beat Tennessee in the Fiesta Bowl to be national champs? This run then sets the wild cats up as a Nebraska/OU type power in the rest of the Big 12's run.

We'd be talking a KSU that plays at a 80K stadium and gets national attention on the level that OU and NU do today which is more than Boise and Miami do.

Cliff notes: Size of fan base X amount of success = overall value.

That means someone like Miami needs a LOT of success to have the attention they get while Michigan can be pretty mediocre and still pack the house and command national attention.

(02-27-2013 11:11 AM)Topkat Wrote:  I agree. But for the thread topic and attempted correlation, the 600lb gorilla is reported attendance.

Because that's what we peons have access to. The people spending the money have the more relevant data, the Nielsen rating reports, and binders of spreadsheets slicing and dicing those ratings every which way.

Bottom line is for a school to elevate their brand they need to BE SEEN consistently winning nationally relevant games. Attendance is a mangifier to that but that only matters if there is nationally relevant success to magnify.

(05-25-2012 01:00 PM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  

(05-24-2012 04:05 PM)b0ndsj0ns Wrote:  

(05-24-2012 03:28 PM)goodknightfl Wrote:  I would think good attendance in a small market is a negative for TV. Already have a small market and a larger percentage are at the game.

Except for the fact that nearly every school with really good attendance is located in a small market. That would be pretty impressive though if all of our fans were actually located in the Greenville/New Bern DMA. That would mean we were getting nearly 15% of the DMA to show up on game days.

I think if you have high attendance in a small market area, that means that people must be coming from miles around to attend the games, which means that team must have wide area appeal.

Maybe. Or maybe that team's fanbase is similar to what TV people joke about some NHL fanbases, the joke being that, sure, the team sells out its home games, but nearly all of the team's diehard fans are in the arena watching the game and no one's watching on TV.

That's why the TV guys have real data that they pay good money for (not just the Nielsen stuff released for public consumption) that tells them both the total number of people watching and where those people are located (so you can see which games have a big local following, which games have a big national following, and which games are attracting only people who are randomly surfing through their 162 channels).

But, as someone noted above, you and I don't have access to that real data. All we have are a bunch of guys on message boards whose "insider sources" are the voices inside their own heads.

(02-27-2013 09:46 AM)piratefan1975 Wrote:  Wanted to bump this thread because it is relevant to what has occurred recently.

So, the Big East turned down a contract that was slightly above what the linear model suggested.

In exchange, we have a 20 million dollar deal for an 11-team conference; or approximately $1.82 million per team. Based on 2012 NCAA attendance figures, the nBe would have averaged 30,864 per game in attendance.

C-USA makes about 1.16 million per year and, according to 2012 figures, the new C-USA would have averaged 20,419 per game.

The nBe has 51% more attendance than C-USA. In addition, their TV contract reflects a 57% increase over C-USA. If those were plotted on the previous graphs, it would fall directly in line.

This is assuming that the C-USA tv contract, which was based on former teams; many of which will be in the nBe, is not re-negotiated downward.

22 Mil = 2 mil per team. If a 12th team is added it goes to 1.83. However, a 12th team is not required.

(02-27-2013 12:07 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(05-25-2012 01:00 PM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  

(05-24-2012 04:05 PM)b0ndsj0ns Wrote:  

(05-24-2012 03:28 PM)goodknightfl Wrote:  I would think good attendance in a small market is a negative for TV. Already have a small market and a larger percentage are at the game.

Except for the fact that nearly every school with really good attendance is located in a small market. That would be pretty impressive though if all of our fans were actually located in the Greenville/New Bern DMA. That would mean we were getting nearly 15% of the DMA to show up on game days.

I think if you have high attendance in a small market area, that means that people must be coming from miles around to attend the games, which means that team must have wide area appeal.

Maybe. Or maybe that team's fanbase is similar to what TV people joke about some NHL fanbases, the joke being that, sure, the team sells out its home games, but nearly all of the team's diehard fans are in the arena watching the game and no one's watching on TV.

That's why the TV guys have real data that they pay good money for (not just the Nielsen stuff released for public consumption) that tells them both the total number of people watching and where those people are located (so you can see which games have a big local following, which games have a big national following, and which games are attracting only people who are randomly surfing through their 162 channels).

But, as someone noted above, you and I don't have access to that real data. All we have are a bunch of guys on message boards whose "insider sources" are the voices inside their own heads.

Not true in the northern tier of US. Teams like the Red Wings are watched heavily in Michigan.

It would be interesting to see if that graph could be expanded to include the MAC and Belt. Our TV payouts are microscopic compared to other conferences, though it'd be interesting if it fell in line with the rest of the bunch.

(02-27-2013 01:41 PM)Love and Honor Wrote:  It would be interesting to see if that graph could be expanded to include the MAC and Belt. Our TV payouts are microscopic compared to other conferences, though it'd be interesting if it fell in line with the rest of the bunch.

Well, the line hits zero dollars at about 25,000 average attendance, so pretty much.

Problem : schools give tickets away. USM only averaged 25,000 or so last year (0-12), but we have a higher proportion of actual paying customers than a lot of other CUSA and even Big East schools. Our tickets also range from $25-50 and we have
suites. I see your point, but I think ticket revenue is a better variable to look at.

(02-27-2013 06:00 PM)AndreWhere Wrote:  Problem : schools give tickets away. USM only averaged 25,000 or so last year (0-12), but we have a higher proportion of actual paying customers than a lot of other CUSA and even Big East schools. Our tickets also range from $25-50 and we have
suites. I see your point, but I think ticket revenue is a better variable to look at.

But, we don't have that information available to us either. Schools can report whatever they want. There are no independent audits. We have no real way of knowing which crowd of 30,000 is all paying customers and which is a crowd of people who got 4 tickets free when they bought a bucket of chicken at KFC.

(02-27-2013 03:00 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(02-27-2013 01:41 PM)Love and Honor Wrote:  It would be interesting to see if that graph could be expanded to include the MAC and Belt. Our TV payouts are microscopic compared to other conferences, though it'd be interesting if it fell in line with the rest of the bunch.

Well, the line hits zero dollars at about 25,000 average attendance, so pretty much.

That might be a little generous.

(05-24-2012 10:43 AM)piratefan1975 Wrote:  Now, as 4x4Hokie mentioned above, the ACC and Big 12 recently renegotiated their contracts based on the additions of Pitt, Cuse and TCU and WVU, respectively.

This graph shows the correlation between average attendance and TV revenue. The average attendance of both the ACC and Big 12 has been adjusted to include the new additions. It also reflects the value of their new TV contracts accordingly.

4x4Hokie nailed it. These new contracts push the "best fit" line steeper; although there is still a correlation between attendance and revenue.



This graph brings the ACC and Big 12 in line with the Pac 12. The Big 10 network revenues and the SEC lag behind now. What will the SEC do in response?

The Big East is even more undervalued based on their former average conference attendance.

It's worth noting, that

1. if the original BIG EAST offer was included, then the BIG EAST is consistent with what it should be. Since, I think that the BIG EAST info includes BIG EAST teams at the point of the last offer, then I think that it's more accurate to include the offer that the actual contract, which invollved an entirely different set of teams.

2. the SEC is currently in the process of renegotiating, and is expected to get a substantial bump. The coming bump will make it closer to what it should be according to the graph.

3. the B1G is the next major conference to renegotiate, and it will likely renegotiate in a year or two. The B1G should see an increase too, which will bring it closer to where it should be. Actually, since all these contracts are back-loaded and the B1G contract is the oldest, it's worth noting that the B1G contract is overperforming, and paying out more than it's average payout, whereas all the other contracts are paying out below their average payout. Going by actual payouts, the B1G is probs almost exactly where it should be.

In short, the BIG EAST is low because the attendance numbers involve one set of teams, and the payout involves a different set of teams, the SEC is low because the contract is being renegotiated, and the B1G is low because the contract is about to be renegotiated. The rest are very close to where they should be.

These graphs confirm what I've been saying all along. TV value is a factor of fans, (potential fans*the liklihood of realizing that potential), enthusiasm, and (potential fan enthusiasm*the liklihood of realizing that potential).

It is NOT a factor of being "in" markets, except to the extent that being "in" markets increases the liklihood of a team realizing their potential.

(02-27-2013 09:51 AM)S11 Wrote:  Attendance is sometimes a good indicator but you certainly have significant outliers.

Boise has 36k, ECU has 50k but pretty much everyone except Pirate homers would agree that BSU is by far the bigger and more valuable brand.

Miami has 45k and ISU has 55k but nobody thinks the Cyclones pack as much tv punch as Da U.

So it's one of many metrics.

Yes, I think that it is an indicator of the real driving forces, but your BSU and Miami examples illustrate outliers which will always be present in statistics. Grouping schools together (i.e. what conferences do) balances out much of that random chance. For every Boise, there are teams that have strong followings that stink. Tennessee is a mess, Texas missed a bowl a year ago, and PSU will likely fall off, but I bet their attendance will still be strong by most objective standards.

EDITED TO FIX TYPO AND OMISSION

(03-01-2013 12:17 PM)nzmorange Wrote:  

(02-27-2013 09:51 AM)S11 Wrote:  Attendance is sometimes a good indicator but you certainly have significant outliers.

Boise has 36k, ECU has 50k but pretty much everyone except Pirate homers would agree that BSU is by far the bigger and more valuable brand.

Miami has 45k and ISU has 55k but nobody thinks the Cyclones pack as much tv punch as Da U.

So it's one of many metrics.

Yes, I think that it is an indicator of the real driving forces, but your BSU and Miami examples illustrate outliers which will always be present in statistics. Grouping schools together (i.e. what conferences do) balances out much of that random chance. For every Boise, there are teams that have strong followings that stink. Texas also missed a bowl a year ago, and PSU will likely fall off, but I bet their attendance will still be strong by most objective standards.

I'm not disputing that at all. My whole point is that relying on the attendance metric on it's own to valuate a single program is far from reliable.

If I had to do it it in terms of recent brand I'd probably put some kind of math equation with complexities accounting for:

a- how much teams won and who they won against.

b- how visible they are winning: EXAMPLE: 2008 Texas Tech beating UT with a 7.5 rating on ABC gets a LOT more credit than Utah's 2008 win over TCU that was stuck on Versus. Both were tough wins but people remember one game and scratch their heads at the other.

c- bowl appearances & national titles in the past 5, 10, 15, and 20 years.

d- to a lesser extent attendance and alumni numbers.

Weight that to place more emphasis on recent years (3-5 window) as people tune in for recent success and you'd probably have something moderately reliable.

(03-01-2013 01:07 PM)S11 Wrote:  

(03-01-2013 12:17 PM)nzmorange Wrote:  

(02-27-2013 09:51 AM)S11 Wrote:  Attendance is sometimes a good indicator but you certainly have significant outliers.

Boise has 36k, ECU has 50k but pretty much everyone except Pirate homers would agree that BSU is by far the bigger and more valuable brand.

Miami has 45k and ISU has 55k but nobody thinks the Cyclones pack as much tv punch as Da U.

So it's one of many metrics.

Yes, I think that it is an indicator of the real driving forces, but your BSU and Miami examples illustrate outliers which will always be present in statistics. Grouping schools together (i.e. what conferences do) balances out much of that random chance. For every Boise, there are teams that have strong followings that stink. Texas also missed a bowl a year ago, and PSU will likely fall off, but I bet their attendance will still be strong by most objective standards.

I'm not disputing that at all. My whole point is that relying on the attendance metric on it's own to valuate a single program is far from reliable.

If I had to do it it in terms of recent brand I'd probably put some kind of math equation with complexities accounting for:

a- how much teams won and who they won against.

b- how visible they are winning: EXAMPLE: 2008 Texas Tech beating UT with a 7.5 rating on ABC gets a LOT more credit than Utah's 2008 win over TCU that was stuck on Versus. Both were tough wins but people remember one game and scratch their heads at the other.

c- bowl appearances & national titles in the past 5, 10, 15, and 20 years.

d- to a lesser extent attendance and alumni numbers.

Weight that to place more emphasis on recent years (3-5 window) as people tune in for recent success and you'd probably have something moderately reliable.

A-C affect attendance. Personally, I would do it by revenues* and projected revenue trends**, but attendance is close enough***.

*I would use revenues, because average ticket prices vary, and revenues accounts for basketball and olympic sport contributions, as opposed to just football.
**Many of your factors affect projected revenue trends.
***Although it does discriminate against private schools, which tend to have broader fan bases, because there is MUCH less regional/state loyalty, so their ratings tend to be better than their attendances.

(03-03-2013 12:37 PM)nzmorange Wrote:  

(03-01-2013 01:07 PM)S11 Wrote:  

(03-01-2013 12:17 PM)nzmorange Wrote:  

(02-27-2013 09:51 AM)S11 Wrote:  Attendance is sometimes a good indicator but you certainly have significant outliers.

Boise has 36k, ECU has 50k but pretty much everyone except Pirate homers would agree that BSU is by far the bigger and more valuable brand.

Miami has 45k and ISU has 55k but nobody thinks the Cyclones pack as much tv punch as Da U.

So it's one of many metrics.

Yes, I think that it is an indicator of the real driving forces, but your BSU and Miami examples illustrate outliers which will always be present in statistics. Grouping schools together (i.e. what conferences do) balances out much of that random chance. For every Boise, there are teams that have strong followings that stink. Texas also missed a bowl a year ago, and PSU will likely fall off, but I bet their attendance will still be strong by most objective standards.

I'm not disputing that at all. My whole point is that relying on the attendance metric on it's own to valuate a single program is far from reliable.

If I had to do it it in terms of recent brand I'd probably put some kind of math equation with complexities accounting for:

a- how much teams won and who they won against.

b- how visible they are winning: EXAMPLE: 2008 Texas Tech beating UT with a 7.5 rating on ABC gets a LOT more credit than Utah's 2008 win over TCU that was stuck on Versus. Both were tough wins but people remember one game and scratch their heads at the other.

c- bowl appearances & national titles in the past 5, 10, 15, and 20 years.

d- to a lesser extent attendance and alumni numbers.

Weight that to place more emphasis on recent years (3-5 window) as people tune in for recent success and you'd probably have something moderately reliable.

A-C affect attendance. Personally, I would do it by revenues* and projected revenue trends**, but attendance is close enough***.

*I would use revenues, because average ticket prices vary, and revenues accounts for basketball and olympic sport contributions, as opposed to just football.
**Many of your factors affect projected revenue trends.
***Although it does discriminate against private schools, which tend to have broader fan bases, because there is MUCH less regional/state loyalty, so their ratings tend to be better than their attendances.

Perhaps I phrased it in a way that implied differently but I was talking in terms of tv value. So ticket prices won't have any real impact on viewership but teams winning big games on the big stage tend to increase in value like Boise did.