(07-07-2019 11:38 AM)GoldenWarrior11 Wrote:  

(07-07-2019 10:27 AM)Foreverandever Wrote:  

(07-07-2019 09:42 AM)scoscox Wrote:  Coog,

As for football, the least we know is that they won’t be playing any American teams. I think it’s probably safe to assume they’ll play more local teams that are lower level, which is probably a significant cost savings, but we don’t know.

As for the rest, half of their conference away games are now a bus ride instead of flight for all sports. Probably another decent chunk of change. Maybe not two million but that doesn’t seem to crazy to me and I’m not sure why the UConn AD and Pres would lie about that estimate

Lastly, that’s not my personal estimate I got it from another source, but like I said it’s optimistic, so things like 3rd tier rights may come back less than what he projected. We really don’t know how that’s gonna work out yet. I’d imagine Fox will want to be accommodating as much as they can to UConn.

Chappy,
You’re right that it wasn’t really about the money. Again, their AD has said as much.

That isn't some source lol, it's just a document someone made.

Is this what are educational system is coming too? I can go make a Google doc right now that says they will lose 50m.

I want to point out yet again some obvious mistakes.

2.2m is the old contract, which is over this year. UConn is losing out on the new media deal which is probably around 7.5m (84m ESPN and probably another 4-5 m CBSsports "Navy tier" 2-3m from CBS OTA basketball).

UConn did not send every sport to UCF or Houston or Tulsa. Some of those sports the teams don't play and in football and basketball the schedules are unbalanced meaning they don't play them at all or they play them once.

Temple, ECU, Cincinnati are all a wash when it comes to travel for the big east. There are three teams extremely close in Providence, St John's, and Seaton Hall. There are also mandatory trips to Milwaukee, Omaha, Chicago, and Butler because the Big East plays a true round robin.

UConn will now send its women's lacrosse team to Denver....

Independents for football usually have some of the highest travel costs and it's much more expensive in moving equipment and number of people compared to Olympic sports with fewer people and no shoulderpads.

Finally the Big East is not be getting more money in its media deal, they had a pro rata clause (the contract will pay the same individual rate to each member) for up to 12. It seems unlikely they will get a raise when the contract is up in 2025/2026, their ratings are sometimes under 100k. The Big East is desperate to attract eyes right now which is why they pushed for UConn hard a large public school. There are also no third tier rights in the Big East deal. They get 5 women's basketball games.


As far as the AAC deal goes and producing events, this 1m or 2m or I am sure 3m soon, cost has been debunked many times. Rider manages to do it just fine, as do the MAC and CUSA teams (whose main deal is with CBSsports) and their total media pay outs are well under a million per team.

North Alabama has a budget of 8-9m and aren't complaining about the costs in a leage that pays them nothing so obviously they aren't paying a million dollars to produce (or even 400k).

A few points:
1
The travel issues were a legitimate concern for UConn in the AAC, and the move to the Big East substantially helps with that. UConn spent over $7 million annually on travel costs alone; when you are one of two NE programs in a predominantly Southern-based conference, it doesn't matter whether it is to Tulsa or Orlando or Houston or New Orleans or Tampa or Dallas or Wichita or New Orleans, a majority of road trips incurred significantly travel costs and time for their athletic programs. You highlight Denver being a travel problem for UConn; Denver is in one sport in the Big East (Lacrosse), and they are one of the top programs nationally in that sport. The furthest full-member (Creighton) has a top-10 attendance figure for men's basketball annually. The third closest city for UConn in the AAC (Cincinnati) will now become the sixth furthest in the BE. The lone isolated long-distance trips in the Big East are clearly worth it to UConn because of the value those programs provide, which clearly the same could not be said about the distant programs for them in the AAC.
2
The average payout of the new AAC TV deal will be $7 million on average annually; it is an escalating deal where it will be over $7 million near the end of the deal, which means it likely starts off lower at the start. With what UConn was making with the prior AAC TV, along with the BE divorce war chest payments, UConn was actually making the same amount as the last Big East TV deal. However, since the war chest payments concluded, along with the terms of the new AAC TV deal released, UConn was definitely going to be taking a noticeable pay cut in terms of future payouts (which would have been locked-in until the early 2030's). There were many other factors that encouraged UConn to make a move when it did - the reputation and perception of AAC basketball was simply not at the same level of the Big East, its conference tournament was averaging incredibly small crowds, no other team made a significant run in the tournament other than Houston this year in five years, the AAC blocked the SNY revenues/exposure for UConn, its conference headquarters was being moved to Dallas (from Providence), a significant amount of its content was being moved to ESPN+ behind a pay wall and there will be new production costs for host AAC programs to distribute through ESPN. If recent reports about the Big East's new contract with Fox are true, not only will the average value be higher than the AAC again, but the expenses will have been significantly cut as well (again without football). Furthermore, the Big East's contract is for basketball-only (not all sports like the AAC); so, in terms of value and ROI, it is a much better deal for UConn.
3
To your comment about North Alabama, which was an FCS independent last year, played all but two games in the Southeast last year (six games in the state of Alabama). Even they were able to keep their travel costs down being an independent. Now as a member of the Big South, they still play all their games in the Southeast region (Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia). UConn has had one NE opponent (Temple), one Midwest opponent (Cincinnati), four Southeast opponents (ECU, Tulane, UCF, USF) and four Southwest opponents (Houston, SMU, Wichita, Tulsa). That comparison is not accurate for travel purposes at all.

1
I will address this one last time, the big east plays more games than the AAC, they didn't have to go to Tulsa, Houston, Dallas etc every year for Olympics and in football they skipped two or three western teams every year. They didn't go to them in things like lacrosse because those schools don't have those teams. They will be going to Milwaukee, Omaha, Chicago and now Denver for every sport but football, where they likely will be now be travelling to Virginia and southern New Mexico (Liberty/NMST). All of this is why you slipped back into ticket revenue numbers and talk about attendance. When you have 20+ Olympic sports it doesn't matter where you send them it costs a lot of money. You aren't saving a lot when it's an occasional trip to Texas/Florida vs regular trips to Milwaukee and Omaha and occassionally Denver. Especially when you think about the fact they will be travelling even further year in year out for football.



2
So much is wrong with this I am sure I will miss stuff.

The AAC currently makes more in distribution then the big east does according to taxes on our 2m media deal.

The Big East contract is locked in for payouts, there is no renegotiation. This is according to the Big East when they said they were looking at 11. They can add and not reduce the pay out because the contract has the option of maintaining the pay rate for up to 12 members. Fox agreed they would pay any new team added what they paid the old team, the Big East agreed the contract terms would not change if they added teams. UConn will get the same money as everyone else, which will be the same as last year.

The new AAC contract is increasing in value (3×+). The new AAC contract is not graduated, i.e. we will get 7m from ESPN each year not start at 5 and end at 9. We also have money from the Navy games sold to CBSsports as a separate deal and the CBS OTA contract we get for select basketball games. So the total media pay out will be between 7.5-8m a team starting in 2020. However since we are already making more than the big east now even a graduated contract means we would still make considerably more.

The conference tournament was put in UConn (it is now moving to DFW) and it still sucked, because their team did.

No we did not block the SNY deal, ESPN was in talks and had previously under the last contract allowed them to have that relationship, but were against allowing UConn to double dip again with the pay. Nor does the big east deal allow them to have that relationship in anything but football which is not a big east sport.

FS1 is behind a pay wall, it's called cable. The big east games have games under 100k viewership because people don't care even when they get FS1/FS2 forced on them through basic packages.

The number of games on linear TV went up in the new AAC deal. The production costs will not increase (and aren't high anyway) because the schools were already producing almost all of the ESPN+ content (low level Olympic sports, highlight shows, coaches shows) for either the American Digital Network, local consumption, or their own websites/ESPN3.

I am sure I missed some but it was a lot of bad info you packed together.



3
North Alabama was about starting their ESPN+ conference contract and had nothing to do with travel.

But since this is a geography lesson.

The Texas schools and Tulsa/Wichita are not southwest, we're the plains, the southwest is Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, and sometimes Colorado. Texas was a confederate state and often stands alone like California for reference.

Temple and Navy are in the mid Atlantic region.

You may want to get an FBS map though, the teams closer to UConn who play FBS football than Temple and Navy (who you conveniently forgot) are Boston College, Syracuse, and UMass. That's it. UConn's football is going to travel, it's likely going to travel to Florida (7 teams) or Texas (10+ teams). Considering how schedules are made and how botched a job UConn's administration did, they are likely looking at games in Virginia and New Mexico, if they are lucky Utah. Plus one or two big buy games a year playing an SEC or Big 10 team.