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Reports are the deal is done with details to be announced soon. I've seen lots of numbers thrown out in various threads so I figured I"d formalize it. What's your best guess for the annual amount of the deal per school from ESPN? Let's limit this to just the terms of this deal and not include any secondary rights, etc. sold separately. Made it open for 5 days so vote early since the announcement could go public at any time and you don't want to be that guy predicting after the fact...

I picked $5-7M. Hope it’s more

$9-11M

I'm going with 5-7.

I have no idea but the current results of this poll are pretty depressing.

$0 and they show snippets of our games during commercial timeouts of games from other leagues.

They'll throw us a little bone, but for the most part they're going to shaft us. ...again.

I think it will exceed expectations, $13m. 😎

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They'll be the highest paid conference outside of the p5, likely by a good margin. That's where they should be. It's clearly below the p5 but above the rest.

9-11 million

9-11 - but they will be contractually obligated to drop the P6 from all marketing activities and ESPN announcers will be required to say the phrase "P5" 25 times and show P5 standings and stats during every athletic telecast.

We get 25% of the viewers of the other conferences, meaning we should get 25% of the revenue (between $4.8M-$7.2M). I personally don't see us anywhere near $10M/team/year, as that would be a roughly 500% increase in Tier 1 Rights fees for an increase of only 8% viewers over the last 5 years.

So did the Memphis President get way out ahead of his skis on the media deal announcement? I thought he was quoted last week saying we'd learn this week. I know, it's only Friday afternoon. But it would seem past the optimum time for a media announcement as people shift into weekend mode.

Of course we had a President at UC who made thinly veiled promises that he couldn't deliver on either. Maybe it goes with the office.

(03-01-2019 01:46 PM)OKIcat Wrote:  So did the Memphis President get way out ahead of his skis on the media deal announcement? I thought he was quoted last week saying we'd learn this week. I know, it's only Friday afternoon. But it would seem past the optimum time for a media announcement as people shift into weekend mode.

Of course we had a President at UC who made thinly veiled promises that he couldn't deliver on either. Maybe it goes with the office.

He said a week or so.. and IIRC on another radio show he or the AD was on said 7-10 days. I believe the AAC can go out to the market if a deal is not signed by midnight tonight so I will imagine we will hear something between today and Monday.

(03-01-2019 01:34 PM)BearcatMan Wrote:  We get 25% of the viewers of the other conferences, meaning we should get 25% of the revenue (between $4.8M-$7.2M). I personally don't see us anywhere near $10M/team/year, as that would be a roughly 500% increase in Tier 1 Rights fees for an increase of only 8% viewers over the last 5 years.

Does this factor in where the broadcast was? For instance did our ABC games get 25% the viewership of other ABC/NBC/Fox/CBS games? Did our ESPN games get 25% the viewership of other conference ESPN games? How did our ESPN2 games compare to other conferences ESPN2/FS1 type games?

I feel like that's a comparison that will be explored as well. Games placed on ESPNU should probably be compared to other games on ESPNU.

(03-01-2019 01:51 PM)CliftonAve Wrote:  

(03-01-2019 01:46 PM)OKIcat Wrote:  So did the Memphis President get way out ahead of his skis on the media deal announcement? I thought he was quoted last week saying we'd learn this week. I know, it's only Friday afternoon. But it would seem past the optimum time for a media announcement as people shift into weekend mode.

Of course we had a President at UC who made thinly veiled promises that he couldn't deliver on either. Maybe it goes with the office.

He said a week or so.. and IIRC on another radio show he or the AD was on said 7-10 days. I believe the AAC can go out to the market if a deal is not signed by midnight tonight so I will imagine we will hear something between today and Monday.

The 30 day exclusive negotiation window for ESPN closes on Saturday, so you'd have to think there would be an announcement around this time.

(03-01-2019 01:52 PM)bearcatmark Wrote:  

(03-01-2019 01:34 PM)BearcatMan Wrote:  We get 25% of the viewers of the other conferences, meaning we should get 25% of the revenue (between $4.8M-$7.2M). I personally don't see us anywhere near $10M/team/year, as that would be a roughly 500% increase in Tier 1 Rights fees for an increase of only 8% viewers over the last 5 years.

Does this factor in where the broadcast was? For instance did our ABC games get 25% the viewership of other ABC/NBC/Fox/CBS games? Did our ESPN games get 25% the viewership of other conference ESPN games? How did our ESPN2 games compare to other conferences ESPN2/FS1 type games?

I feel like that's a comparison that will be explored as well. Games placed on ESPNU should probably be compared to other games on ESPNU.

The bulk viewer growth factors in all broadcasts for all sports on all networks, however the comparison with other conferences does not.

My vote is between $9 and $11 million, but obviously hoping for more.

Well it looks like the results are in and according to the sportsbusinessdaily.com article, the actual number is $6.94M per school per year on average for just the ESPN contract. So technical congratulations goes out to the 14 voters going with $5-7M but a high honorable mention goes out to the 15 who went with $7-9M. Between the two groups that was just about 50% of the board so I'd say as a whole this board's voters (myself excluded) had this deal sniffed out pretty well.