quo vadis
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RE: If Big Ten deal exceeds 1Billion annually, should the ACC be worried?
(02-24-2022 11:12 AM)JRsec Wrote: (02-24-2022 09:29 AM)quo vadis Wrote: (02-24-2022 04:39 AM)esayem Wrote: (02-23-2022 11:54 PM)Schema Wrote: For the next eleven years or so, I'm sure I'll worry about the ever growing financial gap between the ACC and the SEC/B1G. Then, probably around 2033 or 2034, I'll start worry about what kind of new media contract the ACC will be able to negotiate with Disney during their exclusive negotiation window or on the open market if they don't plan on re-signing with Disney. If schools in the ACC drastically improved their football product over the years and a new (much shorter) media contract sounds awesome, then great. Otherwise, if the next ten to twelve years of ACC football didn't go so well and the rumors of the new media contract negotiations are underwhelming, then my worry changes to hoping the SEC or B1G choose my alma mater for expansion.
And that’s the sensible outlook. I’d add that I hope ESPN/Disney is looking out for the best interests of its investment and is helping with ways to increase payouts during those 11 years. It makes sense for ESPN to want the ACC to be a national competitor after all.
We can already see the resurgence of Miami football under NIL. This shows me the revenue gap isn’t as much of a competitive advantage in this new paradigm as the chicken littles believe.
People will point to SEC basketball and say “look at this!” Well, this isn’t the first time the SEC has had success on the hardwood. It’s actually a combination of a string of good coaching hires after a competitive lull and the fact a dominant conference like the ACC is going through massive coaching turnover.
Well, first, ESPN has established and ACCN to help the ACC with revenues. It's not going to just give the ACC more money out of its own pocket, but if there are ways to grow the revenue pie so that both the ACC and ESPN get more, there's no reason for ESPN not to do that. I think that's what the ACCN is.
As for your second statement, I tend to agree with it, and it tends to contradict the first. The ACC is likely to remain a clear-cut P5 conference in football despite the growing revenue gap, because revenue isn't the only thing that matters. I mean, look at Tennessee's football revenue compared to Cincy and UCF and Boise the past 10 years, and the results.
But, if you are correct that it is in ESPN's interest for the ACC to be competitive, then that seems to undercut the notion that ESPN will be concerned about ACC revenues, because those revenues aren't necessarily needed to be competitive.
I expect ESPN to milk its very good deal with the ACC for the next 10+ years, the way it has with the SEC ... ESPN has actually played just about as much hardball with the SEC as it has the ACC, the SEC just was lucky in that it added Texas AM, which really boosted its value, that the SECN has been such a fantastic success in drumming up new money, and that they had that CBS side-deal expiring in 2023.
Really, without that CBS side-deal expiring and being converted in to far more money, there would IMO be massive grumbling within the SEC about how badly that 2008 deal with ESPN has left them behind the B1G. That alone is what will keep the SEC in the same range as the B1G once the B1G signs its new 2023 deals.
Luck is a piss poor descriptor for a deal 22 years in the works! You mealy mouth the things the SEC planned and worked on way too much. Business deals aren't luck either. They are good or bad depending on who makes them and how competent they were and over how much understanding of value exists on either side of the arrangement.
The ACC simply made an awful deal. They made it because they were content with status quo and bet on schools which already didn't control their markets when they picked them to gain cable subscription fees instead of to add dominance, and I'm not talking about FSU and Miami.
The SEC made a bad deal with CBS, not with ESPN. It was CBS that locked in lopsided value for too long of a span. That mistake happened because the SEC was focused on exposure. It's the same thinking ND used in making a deal with NBC only theirs aren't so long.
I suppose a deal in the works for 32 years with Texas and Oklahoma is just luck? You do realize that out of 1990's original targets of Arkansas, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas's then silent partner (Oklahoma), Clemson and Florida State, the SEC has acquired 4 along with South Carolina instead of Clemson. I'm sure long-range planning and years of talks had nothing to do with that, right?
Discussions about expansion were centered on markets, brands, and potential revenue and upon enhancing strength in changing times. There wasn't much room for luck. I'd say the more insular "nothing will change our world" approach that the ACC took into what for their core was an annoying expansion and invasion of privacy was less well thought out and looked and felt more like a parking lot for ESPN's removal of potential Big 10 expansion targets, only ESPN has had a long-range plan as well, and one vast enough that a simple map didn't necessarily reveal it as clearly as the SEC's.
What really killed the ACC's position in all of this was OU/UGa vs the NCAA which freed football to be the revenue king while basketball kept working for peanuts on the NCAA plantation. I've never heard such stupidity as the fearful moans of "But the tourney" as an excuse to give away earning potential. The NCAA is the fattest parasite ever grown and those loyal to it are going to die with it. The stupidity of thinking venues filled with 15-20 thousand hoops fans could out earn and should out earn football which drew 80 - 100 thousand who made extra donations just to get in a queue to get tickets was absurd prima facia.
Do you call that "luck" as well, or what it really is, arrogance and stupidity?
No Quo there are a lot of men and women who put long hours of deep planning into what has happened, and they are way above your or my pay grade, and none of it should ever be attributed to just luck. I grew up being told the U.S. Navy got lucky at Midway. Decades later I found out when some things were finally declassified that we had broken their code and knew their plans and location (roughly as there was no GPS). I spent my childhood thinking the Titanic disaster and the Hindenburg explosion were just bad luck only to learn it was ill conceived engineering which doomed them. Now I've lived long enough not to believe in luck. Events are fixed in outcome by solid planning and performance, or lousy planning and performance, or as in gambling, just fixed. And not planning to build in wiggle room to a contract is lousy planning. And innovation alone in the broadcasting world should have necessitated the 6 year windows the B1G now utilizes decades ago. None of it from OU/UGa in 1983 until now has been just luck.
About the two bolded statements:
1) I agree with you (and FT), "luck" was a bad word. The SEC was not lucky to land TAMU, it landed TAMU because it had built up its strength and brand value to the point that a large chunk of TAMU Nation was clamoring for their school to leave for the SEC. That was a bad choice of words, and I didn't mean it as in the sense that TAMU could have gone somewhere else and just happened to randomly choose the SEC. It wanted to join the SEC because of SEC strength and the natural rivalries with several of the SEC west teams.
2) As we've discussed before, I think both of the 2008 deals were bad deals. The CBS deal was worse in one sense, in that it didn't have any possibilities, such as the establishment of the SECN with ESPN, that could make its bad terms somewhat less bad. But IMO the ESPN deal was worse in another, and larger sense, just because it was a bad deal for much more of the conference's rights.
And IMO, the SEC likely dodged a bullet in 2012, when after adding TAMU and Mizzou, it wanted CBS to up that 2008 deal. Had CBS agreed, it probably would have done so at a much lower rate than what the SEC will get in 2023, and likely would have asked for 10 more years tacked on to it, like ESPN did to create the SECN. And then the SEC would have been stuck at say $100m a year for 20 more years, instead of getting the big cash in that we will get in 2023. We owe CBS a "thanks" for refusing to change that 2008 deal a decade ago, IMO.
To me, what exposed the 2008 ESPN deal as bad is the comparison with the B1G. The B1G has been making more media deal money than us these past several years. Why is that? IMO it's because back in 2006-2007 Delany was smart, he created the BTN with FOX, signed deals with multiple networks, and most crucially, signed their ESPN deal for 10 years, not 15 years. They should have signed for 6 years, but 10 was better than 15.
Otherwise, if you don't think Delany was smarter than the 2007-2008 SEC leadership, then what accounts for the B1G making more media money? The only other thing I can think of is if you believe the B1G is just more valuable than the SEC, and IMO that isn't so. If anything, the SEC is more valuable. Year in and year out, the SEC leads in football attendance and TV ratings, albeit the latter is close.
So to me, it has to be the nature of those deals signed in the late 2000s.
Just MO ...
(This post was last modified: 02-24-2022 04:22 PM by quo vadis.)
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