(12-21-2020 10:34 PM)CG_Hawk06 Wrote: Is love to believe that purchasing that awful deal benefits the team, but I don’t see it. It benefits the conference leadership and enables them to make more bad decisions in the future. The only way we stay away from deals like this in the future are by not buying in. Sacrifice a little now for greater good in the end.
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Whether you understand the details or not, ESPN was not an option for the CAA at this time. As i've explained, we had too many schools with their own regional TV deals that ESPN would not accept. And there were no other deals on the table that would accomodate those existing deals. They could have left it as is, with free viewing on CAASports, but the conference was looking to get something more than just an online viewing on a CAA website.
Also, FloSports does have subscribers for sports other than NCAA basketball, which means there is the potential to grab viewers that otherwise may have never heard of the CAA in addtion to a payout to the CAA. It was the best deal available under our circumstances.
We basically had two options.
1. Continue what we were doing with free games on CAASports. The only exposure we would get was to the existing fan base who watched CAA games on a CAA internet platform. No reach to anyone beyond our base
2. FloSports - An online platform only with no demands on regular tv broadcasts, allowing schools with regional tv deals to keep them. It also included income from FloSports as well as the ability to sell advertising. The plan was to use the income to pay for games to be shown on regular tv stations.
It's really a situation with details you have to know intimately, to understand why we did what we did with FloSports.
This is a good article that explains the details.
https://www.dnronline.com/dnronline/unde...13bc7.html
What D’Antonio said separates this agreement from the other opportunities the CAA had is that while FloSports holds the rights to those games it selects on the digital side, the company won’t restrict how the conference or any of its schools want to handle traditional television.
“There are a lot of different wants and needs for our member institutions when we’re dealing with 17 schools,” D’Antonio said. “Some institutions heavily value their [regional sports network] relationships and JMU is one of them. And we wanted to try to find a partner that was going to allow us to create a comprehensive media package. With Flo, we’ve found a partner that’s allowed us to do that.”
The only exclusivity FloSports is concerned with comes on the digital side.
For instance, if FloSports has the rights to a JMU football game at Bridgeforth Stadium, the school’s digital production, MadiZONE, will not be allowed stream that same game. But if the school partnered with a traditional television network such as NBC Sports Washington or MASN like Bourne’s department often does for Saturdays in the fall, that network can broadcast the same game.