(12-24-2017 07:48 AM)XLance Wrote:  

(12-23-2017 01:48 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(12-23-2017 01:38 PM)XLance Wrote:  

(12-23-2017 12:33 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(12-23-2017 08:36 AM)XLance Wrote:  The question then becomes, do the RSN eventually make the ACCN and SECN obsolete for ESPN?
Could ESPN allow those network contracts to expire in the future and continue to have access to the same content for a lot less money?

Not if we collectivize T3 rights. ESPN can prevent a lot of things but they can't prevent us from producing and selling our T3 on our own, and they can't prevent us from doing it in concert. What's more is they don't want us going down that road because if we can produce and sell T3 on our own what's to prevent us from doing the same for T1 and T2?

This is why they locked up the Big East properties of note for the ACC. At the time the BTN was self owned and self produced. At the time such networks needed carriage help. In the age of streaming that is no longer the case, especially after ESPN insisted that all of us standardize and invest in production facilities with uplinks at each of our campus sites.

They'll pay us slightly more than our expenses would be if we produced ourselves and give us a share of the ad revenue (which is what they essentially do now) to discourage schools from getting into the business.

On the flip side of that JR is the PAC.
They are trying to do everything for themselves and have yet to gain any traction. University Presidents want stability and as a whole would be reluctant to plunge their schools into a business venture without a guaranteed return using the PAC network as a real historical example.
If you want to sell your T3 rights, you have to have buyers ......and short of doing things for yourself the list of potential buyers keeps shrinking.
Fox Sports South carried a lot of ACC content produced by RAYCOM. It will be interesting in that ESPN will have to replace that content not FOX not only for FSS but for all of their RSNs.
I'm not saying you are wrong, but sometimes strategies have to change when circumstances change, and we are taking about a lot of money.

The flip side X is precisely why ESPN is going after the rights, streaming. I don't know how stream ready the PAC is, but the ACC and SEC are very ready. There are plenty of streaming services ready to take that product now. The PAC has labored for two reasons, the streamers weren't ready for them, and their viewing numbers are so low the sponsors weren't there. That's not the case for SEC football or ACC basketball, although your football numbers still need to come up you do have some very salable brands. But when the people in California don't turn out or tune in for anything but Cal / Stanford and USC/UCLA their problems are going to be present no matter what model they utilize.

Streaming? To what end?
I can now get all of the ESPN networks, SECN, the FOX sports networks all for one low price through my cable operator.
I do not get the B1G network, or the PAC series of networks because I choose not to pay for them.
I am not going to cancel or stop watching, or better yet my wife isn't going to stop watching programs that she enjoys or give up "flippin' channels" to save a few dollars a month.
Streaming will reduce income to the conferences (or individual schools). Unless the SECN is bundled with the ACCN (streaming), I am not going to subscribe to it. The $.25 a month the SEC gets now from me now using the cable model will just go away, and if you multiply that by several millions of households it could really put a dent in conference income.
The risk of streaming is that you will lose the casual fan. The person that would only watch one or two games a year because it was on and he/she didn't have anything else to do and it was free.
How do you grow a market or fan base with streaming? For the consumer it like buying a pig in a poke. You have to buy it to try it?
Fortunately all of the pitfalls should be worked out before the ACC contract expires with ESPN.

We'd still need a partner most likely which is why I suggested Amazon. Getting on Amazon Prime platform would guarantee distribution on a massive scale and we would most likely get paid pretty well to do it as a company like that wouldn't necessarily need us to add subscriptions although that would be part of it. They would need us to draw eyeballs to their other products. Amazon is both a distributor and an advertiser.

The thing about it is this...Amazon and Netflix and the others will likely never get into the production side. Not any time soon anyway because their business model depends on viewing content "on demand" for the most part. Producing live sporting events with the same quality as the major broadcast networks would represent a major expenditure. If, however, the conference or whatever sports entity was doing the production themselves then it's really not a big leap.

Currently, these streaming services have only experimented with piggybacking on the signal of regular broadcast networks. I would bet the time is coming when they try to acquire rights. Of course, if Disney's streaming services really take off then it might not matter.