(07-18-2019 06:03 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(07-18-2019 03:19 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(07-18-2019 02:24 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(07-18-2019 09:44 AM)CliftonAve Wrote:  

(07-18-2019 09:32 AM)GoldenWarrior11 Wrote:  https://mattbrown.substack.com/p/what-we...from-media

The TL;DR here is that the ~$7 million deal isn’t exactly ~$7 million, because schools now also have an increased production cost factor to consider, since they’re producing even more programming to fill those ESPN+ slots…not just football and men’s basketball, but other sports too. Those costs aren’t so high as to torpedo the deal, obviously, but I’ve been told it can cost thousands of dollars to produce say, a women’s basketball game. Depending on what infrastructure existed at the school beforehand, those $7 million dollars might be closer to like, $6.3. Maybe less. The devil is in those details, and it would appear not all of those details have been completely resolved.

So, UConn was not the only one with reservations about the TV deal; Cincinnati clearly had concerns as well, and was concerned enough to include UCF and Temple in the correspondence. Bigger picture, the more alarming aspect is that Aresco couldn't (or wouldn't) answer the direct questions about specificity to costs and payouts with the TV deal.

I don't know if it is fair to say Cincinnati was worried. Per the article Mike Bohn was writing on behalf of the AAC Finance and Television Committees, not on behalf of Cincinnati (and the other ADs were not writing on behalf of Temple and UCF).

Your point is actually worse for the AAC as a whole, because writing "on behalf of the AAC Finance and TV Committee" suggests that this was a concern for the entire committee, and by extension the conference generally, not just a school or two.

Bottom line is, some of us have been raising the issue of possibly significant production costs associated with ESPN+, enough to take a non-trivial bite out of that $7m payout. In response, we've been told by many around here that these costs are extremely minor, that basically all the schools already have the necessary infrastructure and that the game-day production can be handled by a few undergrad film majors roaming the sidelines with steady-cams for internship credit.

True, thanks to Aresco's talent for obfuscation, even in correspondence within the conference hierarchy, we're still largely in the grey about exactly what those costs will be. But this note of concern from the AAC committee to Aresco casts a shadow over the argument that ESPN+ production costs are trivial and not to be worried about.

The committee was worried.

No. The committee who’s job it is to understand the contract for the presidents wanted to know how much the costs are. Wow. Ya think? Of course there was a concern. That’s their function. Who is the one who is less concerned? The guy that put together the American Digital Network and is intimately aware of the cost of televising women’s basketball games, baseball games, and numerous championship events for the American Digital Network.

Huh? Committees don't raise an issue with the commissioner during media negotiations just because the issue is under the purview of their committee. They do so when they think there is cause for concern, and if the situation with producing ESPN+ content was as cut-and-dried simple and easy as you've claimed it to be, it stands to reason that the schools would all realize this, and therefore no concerns would be raised in the committee and to the commissioner.

Spin away if you like, but this memo belies those claims and suggests the issue of production costs is more complicated, and likely more costly, than you think.

Television finance committees dont raise questions regarding possible costs involved in a proposed television contract? You think that’s spin? Claiming they don’t when we can read the actual memo is the literal definition of spin. Secondly—explain to me how FCS/D2 schools with tiny budgets do it if it’s so expensive. These FCS/D2 schools don’t have “millions” to spend on video streams that are only watched by a few hundred people.