(11-03-2018 08:45 PM)CardinalJim Wrote: (11-02-2018 11:39 AM)JRsec Wrote: ESPN might very well decide to sell off the ACC at some point. The ACC made great sense under the market footprint model. It doesn't make a much sense in a content driven market.
While I agree The ACC made great sense under the market footprint model, I disagree about The ACC not having a spot in the content driven market.
Your contention might be accurate if college football was played 12 months a year, lucky for The ACC its value to ESPN is in the other sports that fill out the annual sports calendar. Primarily basketball, where no conference can match The ACC, certainly not The SEC that’s a roundball wasteland. While The ACC might not match great with The SEC in football, it matches up better in pigskin then The SEC matches up with The ACC in roundball.
Given the opportunity, more fans will tune in to watch ACC basketball than SEC basketball. Frankly without UK, The SEC is nothing more than a glorified rec league.
You can’t look through the content driven lense and value The SEC at the same level year round as you do September to November. It simply doesn’t have it. ESPN knows it, college basketball fans know it.
The reality is college football is losing popularity. Students aren’t attending games like they used to. Millennials simply don’t follow the game like we do. Not even in the south. As boomers die, college football loses its hardcore fans. They aren’t being replaced, not even in the south.
Ironically soccer may well be more popular than college football by the time The ACC ends its contract with ESPN. The SEC doesn’t even play soccer and The ACC is the best conference in the country. When The SEC announces it will be begin sponsoring soccer, you’ll know the change has started.
Stop looking at college athletics through 2018 eyes. The future will look much different.
CJ
Better check your NCAA Tourney winning % since 1985. The SEC is third behind the Big East and ACC and virtually tied with the Big 10 and outside of the Big East there wasn't much of a statistical difference between the winning % of the ACC/SEC/B1G. And now that we are funneling money to hoops at the behest of Mike Slive before he retired and passed, we are picking up steam there again.
But no matter how you cut it hoops is still only 20% of sports revenue, even for ESPN.
And we match up fine with the ACC in hoops at the top, and are improving in the middle considerably. You can't touch us in baseball. That takes care of the money sports. BTW, viewing %'s in the SEC are pretty strong for hoops and that after all is what drives ad revenue in that sport as well.
And hey CJ when the ACC figures out how to make a nickel on a damned soccer match let the world know and then the SEC will consider spending money on it.
In the meantime, my analysis is on target. Keep an eye on SEC hoops they are only going to get stronger now that we are investing a piece of the football pie in coaches, facilities, and in recruiting. We did pretty well the last two tourneys, and the women's end of the sport is fine for us.
What I'm catching a whiff of is the usual ACC schadenfreude! Oh, and every school in this glorified rec league is still academically ranked higher than Louisville, so....
And as to the future, CJ, when football is no longer king it will just mean everyone will lose that revenue. There is no sport on the horizon or even beyond it that is going to take it's place, or even catch basketball as #2. So when that day comes the ACC will still be 4th or 5th in athletic revenue.
And do some fact checking why don't you. The WSJ valued SEC basketball very favorably, and our viewing numbers have been every bit as strong as those of the ACC. Where the ACC nips the SEC in hoops is in ticket prices. Even our attendance stands well against yours.
As Satchel Page once said, don't look back in basketball, because we are gaining on you!
BTW: The WSJ average valuation of an ACC basektball program was 76 million and 71 million for that of an SEC member.
But, in actual average total revenue the SEC earned 137.6 million per member and the ACC earned 94.8 million. So I don't think we are missing that 5 million in basketball valuation.
And note this if you are peeking into the future. If we pay players going forward college football will be around much longer than if we don't. So it's not going away anytime soon, though it is highly likely that there won't be as many schools playing it at the highest level should we enter a pay for play era, but then the same will be true of basketball, and likely baseball.
It's been turned into a big business with corporate sponsors. It is already professional sports, it just that it hasn't been formally acknowledged yet.
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