(03-08-2017 06:03 PM)arkstfan Wrote: Generally bubbles pop when fundamentals change or the understanding of the fundamentals changes.
Housing market collapsed primarily because a number of people who could afford their house on Thursday, found out on Friday they were being laid off or cut back to part-time and couldn't make the payments. The only thing that changed was the capacity of consumers to pay.
The only thing changing for ESPN is not the capacity or willingness of consumers to pay for the product, what is changing is the method of payment.
Why is top level boxing rarely on free tv or cable channels? Because enough people will pay $65 for one night to make it a better deal than selling to ABC or ESPN or HBO.
ESPN is positioned to play this all sorts of ways in the future once the carriage economy dies out (if it does). They can sell individual events, day packages, week, month, year, one sport, one conference, etc. They can slice and dice and repackage to their heart's content.
There are 4 conference properties really worth paying for.
SEC (Football institution of the south)
B1G (Highest resource athletic conference)
PAC (Western 1/2 of USA)
ACC (Most media markets and basketball tradition)
Instead of ESPN signing all of them you might see 2 of them with ESPN and 2 of them with FOX for significantly higher offers. Enough to have a full stable of power games but not too much where extra second tier channels are needed to get everyone on the tube.
The other conferences value is going to be determined by the value of its basketball. They'll fill out the FS1's, ESPNU, CBS Sports channels with some OTA basketball.
B12 (5-10 mil after TX and OU go)
BE (5-10 mil)
AAC (3-5 5 mil with Wichita, Dayton, Army ect)
MWC, MAC, CUSA, SBC (worth about 1 mil per school as FBS content)
There is enough money and exposure advantages in the second tier of conferences to keep the overall system intact. There are enough second tier networks and broadcast arrangements where CUSA/SBC will eventually get to MAC/MWC money, perhaps with some realignment between CUSA/SBC.
Present value should stay where it is but divided among more media partners.