(04-05-2018 04:17 PM)arkstfan Wrote: (04-05-2018 03:57 PM)quo vadis Wrote: (04-05-2018 03:39 PM)arkstfan Wrote: I think if AAC makes more money it will be because ESPN has two interests. One cut off competitors from anything of value that can be had at a decent price. Two make ESPN+ work and with the change at CEO at ESPN who knows how serious ESPN is about ESPN+ now?
ESPN + is a big wild card here. The Ivy League is an early litmus test of how college athletics fans respond to it. Could be a big boon or a bust.
My inkling is that ESPN is going to want to put as much content as it can online and streaming, and the AAC, being status conscious, is going to resist that.
Just skimming, I found several AAC games on ESPN3, including one involving the national champions from UCF. SMU played three. The bulk of AAC on ESPN3 looks like were vs FCS but some conference games.
Yes, AAC fans and Aresco have often explained away the small dollars in the current contract by talking about the huge amount of ESPN cable channel 'exposure' the conference has gotten in return.
And to be fair, it has gotten a lot. You cruise the ESPN channels during football and hoops season, and you don't have to look very hard to find an AAC game. They aren't always on ESPN and they aren't always in prime spots, but they are there, on an ESPN 'linear cable' channel, and pretty darn frequently.
But that said, there also has been an awful lot of AAC content that has been put on ESPN3 or else sub-contracted to CBSSN. In fact, I think i did a count a while back, and while collectively more football games have been on ESPN Family channels than anywhere else, more games have actually been on CBSSN than on any single ESPN channel. If you were going to identify one single channel as the "home" of AAC football the past five years, it would be CBSSN, not any single ESPN channel.
So there has been a lot of that as well.
To bring this back home: It seems clear that ESPN is really pushing this "+" platform. It's their answer, or part of their answer, to the cord-cutting/roku/a la carte threat that everyone has been talking about. And to sell it, they are going to want to put pretty good, "non-junk" content on it to attract those $5 a month subscribers. And AAC content might very well fit that bill.
In contrast, the AAC is going to want to keep as much of their stuff on the four ESPN cable channels, so that is likely to be a bone of contention.
I predict that the result will be the reverse of last time around: the AAC will agree to more of their stuff going to streaming, in return for more dollars. Because one thing seems clear, the AAC schools are starving for dollars, they've had enough of the '...but it's great exposure!' concept. You can't pay for another recruiter or locker room upgrade with exposure, and Aresco's entire alleged approach since 2012 has been "this time we get exposure, and that will allow us to prove ourselves, and next time we get paid like we should for it".