(06-28-2021 08:14 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(06-28-2021 05:19 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(06-28-2021 03:49 PM)Maize Wrote:  

(06-28-2021 03:35 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(06-28-2021 02:07 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  I suspect ESPN has the leverage, and the reason is i suspect that they are more happy with the current CFP than the P5 are. The party that wants the change more has less leverage.

Thats my sense as well. That said--ESPN has wanted a bigger playoff from the get go---so there is an incentive for them to be reasonable.

ESPN doesn’t want this to get to the open market...not with FS1, CBS, Turner, NBC and streaming services like YouTube, Amazon etc...etc.

Sports are DVR Proof and the notion that it wasn’t going to skyrocket was just plain stupid. Look at the deals that the NFL just pulled off and the NBA is expecting the same jump in Media revenue...

Yes, ESPN doesn't want it to go to market. And yes, it stands to reason that if the expanded playoff is worth 2x or 3x what the current CFP is, ESPN as Coog says has an incentive to do a reasonable deal.

But nevertheless, if things get sticky, ESPN has a signed contract that is good for five more years. Five long years. And that gives them more leverage, IMO, when dealing with conferences eager to make more money sooner rather than later.

On the other hand, this makes more money for ESPN. Only if the colleges agree can ESPN make those extra bucks.

Yes, both sides will benefit, so both will want an agreement. IMO, though, the conferences want an expedited deal more than ESPN, so the deal will tilt towards ESPN.

(06-28-2021 02:57 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(06-28-2021 02:25 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  Just making some notes.

The CFP is effectively a 7 game package--6 New Years' Day/Eve bowls, plus the NCG. The 12 team playoff is an 11 game package.

Are the 4 play-in games twice as valuable as the SEC or Big Ten Championship game? I dunno.
Of course, those two games are now part of bigger packages. So we'd have to roughly separate out values for big event games, compare to the bowl values.

Yes, IIRC, ESPN pays about $470 million for the base CFP package - the three Access bowls and the CFP title game - and another $215 million for three contract bowls. That comes to about $685m a year.

So assuming the contract bowls are rolled in to the 12-team expanded playoffs, we're talking about four extra games.

But at least 2 of the existing 7 will be worth substantially more.

(06-28-2021 08:24 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(06-28-2021 02:57 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(06-28-2021 02:25 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  Just making some notes.

The CFP is effectively a 7 game package--6 New Years' Day/Eve bowls, plus the NCG. The 12 team playoff is an 11 game package.

Are the 4 play-in games twice as valuable as the SEC or Big Ten Championship game? I dunno.
Of course, those two games are now part of bigger packages. So we'd have to roughly separate out values for big event games, compare to the bowl values.

Yes, IIRC, ESPN pays about $470 million for the base CFP package - the three Access bowls and the CFP title game - and another $215 million for three contract bowls. That comes to about $685m a year.

So assuming the contract bowls are rolled in to the 12-team expanded playoffs, we're talking about four extra games.

But at least 2 of the existing 7 will be worth substantially more.

Games are worth more if they draw larger audiences. The one that effectively becomes the 12:30 pm ET quarterfinal on January 1 ought to draw a larger audience than, say, a non-semifinal Peach Bowl played on Dec. 28th in the current format. For the quarterfinal not played on NYD in the proposed format, audience size will depend a lot on the teams in the game and when it's played (maybe 4 pm ET on Dec. 31 or 8 pm ET on Jan. 2). Best case for any of the 4 first-round games, IMO, is an audience the size of a top-rated CCG, which would make them worth maybe $40 million each. If those four are worth $40 million each on average and the two bowls "upgraded" to Dec. 31/Jan. 1/Jan. 2 are each worth $40 million more than they're worth in the current deal, then the new package, if it includes no non-playoff bowls, would get a $240 million increase over the current package.

If you want to make each of those six "increments" $50 million instead of $40 million, that gets the total price for the new deal very close to the $1 billion/year speculated in the CBS-Sportsline article. And perhaps ESPN would pay something more on top of that in order to tie up TV rights to the new playoff for 12 years or more.

(06-28-2021 09:30 AM)usffan Wrote:  I think an offshoot of this is how they're going to split this money. ...

... But with the language that the CFP will use the top 6 champions and not the contracted champions more or less kills that notion (though admittedly not entirely, since those conferences are still 'sacrificing' their champion tie in for the sake of the CFP). And if they use that argument, I would argue that the SEC and B1G should get a bigger share, since they're also sacrificing their additional tie in with the Orange Bowl for this. Also, the Orange pays less than the Rose and Sugar, which would mean the ACC would get slightly less than the others. That probably won't play very well.

Another way to do this would be to say that autonomous schools get a higher amount. That's going to open a giant can of worms that will more or less force them to provide a path for other conferences to achieve autonomy, and gives considerable weight to Aresco's play for autonomy that has already been filed.

The third, and probably most logical way to consider, would be to use some type of "tournament credits" method, ...

The current way to "unbalance" the payments is to channel them through the non CFP Contract bowls, because then ESPN can pay those bowls money which gets directed to the P5 conferences.

However, that doesn't fit into the 12 team format, so what channels are available?

Suppose that "the conference picks the bowl" when it is is hosting a quarterfinal. This is a "to be determined later" in the current proposal. Then the conference has something to sell. Now, suppose the quarterfinal bowls have their own rights payment as part of the package. Now there is someone to pay.

So now there can be contracts, which are the individual conferences using their freedom to pick a host to commit to picking a specific host, and individual bowl committees making the commercial arrangement which best serves their interest.

At the low end of media value for those rights is the system where each top 4 conference champion is host, and the bowl is paying for a matchup between this conference's champion WHEN they are conference champion and whomever they are seeded against by the committee.

At the high end of media value for those rights are where all six autobid conference champions have the right to pick their QF bowl if they are in the quarterfinal, so that the at-large placements are done "around" whatever is the result of the QF bowl contracts with conferences ... if the Big Ten and PAC-12 were to, hypothetically, contract with the Rose Bowl, and both were in the top four conference champions, that QF bowl would be set and one QF bowl would feature two round one winners ... or if one of the two was conference champions #5, their first round game would be in the Rose Bowl bracket, irrespective of committee rankings.

As far as, "but they have never had separate rights within the CFP itself before", we also never had bowls rotating between being semi-final bowls and non-championship bowls before the CFP, either. They appear to be willing to invent new arrangements in order to channel the money to where they want to channel the money.