(11-19-2023 11:28 AM)esayem Wrote:  

(11-19-2023 10:37 AM)djsuperfly Wrote:  

(11-19-2023 10:19 AM)esayem Wrote:  

(11-19-2023 09:54 AM)djsuperfly Wrote:  

(11-19-2023 08:10 AM)esayem Wrote:  In the 30’s and beyond, I believe conference bundling will hit its ceiling and the repercussion of antiquated market adds will start affecting payouts, while singular large brands continue to increase their value. So we’ll be in a situation where it’s going to come down to unequal revenue sharing or solo deals. Solo deals with advanced technology allow more customization for the future sports fan.

Nope, because you can never make as much money when you move from a subsidized model to an unsubsidized one. It's simple math.

I mean, Disney has almost their whole library bundled on Disney+ and then they also bundle that together with other entertainment offerings Hulu and ESPN+--and still none of that is profitable.

So much of sports viewing (among those "large brands" you speak of) is casual viewers. For instance, I don't watch a lot of college basketball. But I do frequently watch UNC-Duke, because it is event viewing (just as in I don't watch a lot of golf but do watch Sunday of the Masters). But would I (and lots of other casual fans who watch now) subscribe to a UNC streaming service just to watch that game? Nope.

Disney? Who needs Disney when Notre Dame or USC go straight to consumer and incorporate students in media curriculum?

Disney, in a vacuum, wasn't the point. The point is streaming isn't profitable. Think about it this way:

RSNs were charging cable companies $2-$3 per subscriber. RSNs that have gone DTC are charging $20-$30 a month--or about 10x. ESPN (just ESPN--not ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNews, ACC Network, SEC Network) is $10 a month per cable subscriber. So, to maintain current profits that would be $100 a month for just ESPN content. I love sports, but I'm not paying that.

And the point is: right now, even though I don't watch much college basketball, I watch Duke-UNC because it's there on ESPN. I'm not, however, going to pay $20 a month, even for one month, to subscribe to a UNC Streaming service just to watch the game.

If you have 10 million-ish people watching The Game: how many of those are die-hard Michigan and Ohio State fans and how many of those are just casual viewers? I imagine if that game is only available on a Michigan Streaming service and an Ohio State Streaming service, that you have 1-2 million viewers tops.

Well I can tell you every bar-grill in the country will subscribe, so there is that.

Also, what's to prevent the Ohio State direct-to-consumer feed from being bundled with other apps/services? Think about how much money universities already spend on production costs. Cut out the middle man. As much as y'all reference corporations, this is exactly what they do!

That’s called a conference.

Look - I get it. You don’t want UNC to get subsumed into the Borg of the Big Ten or SEC, so you’re trying to see some path where those leagues are effectively broken apart (if not competitively, then at least financially). That’s just not where the world is heading. You’re thinking about direct-to-consumer and every sports team owning their own individual service and “cutting out the middle man” is 2019 thinking. We’ve now seen what that model looks like in reality… and no one that actually depends on large broad-based audiences likes it and it’s straight up losing them money.

Every entertainment company started their own streaming service because they wanted to cut out the middle man of Netflix. That was outwardly the goal of every single entertainment company CEO: they ALL wanted to be Netflix. What they’re now finding is that there might be space for Netflix and maybe one or two other platforms with their reach… and everyone else will need to consolidate or die.

Once again, look at what Warner JUST did with DC movies and HBO shows in licensing them to Netflix again. Warner actually has one of the better performing streaming platforms with Max and they’re STILL finding out that it’s more profitable to go to the middle man of Netflix at the end of the day.

The middle man is actually more important than ever. Amazon is the ultimate middle man just like Walmart and Target have long been the middle man. I think you’re underestimating how much consumers value simplicity and a streamlined platform.

The paradox of the history of the Internet is that, on paper, it seems so easy to has low barriers to entry and would seem to be an equal marketplace where middle men are eliminated and anyone can directly sell to billions of people in their homes and then later via mobile truly anywhere that any person is located in the world.

Yet, what has instead happened is that the Internet has created the most powerful and wealthiest middlemen in the history of the world: Google for search, Amazon for consumer products, Apple and Android for mobile, YouTube and now TikTok for video, Facebook for social media, Uber and Lyft for ride sharing, etc. All of these firms had a ton of competition (even super well-financed competition like Microsoft in several of these areas) and even lower prices in a lot of instances… yet the problem a lot of business people and investors didn’t understand for far too long that people don’t *want* to have to choose between dozens of different choices to get what they’re looking for.

That has been the irony of the Internet: too *much* choice paralyzes consumers. So, they have ended up going to a handful of places that aggregate all of that together: the most powerful companies in the world are PURE middlemen.

Streaming is merely another Internet industry. Netflix will surely survive. Amazon will survive because it’s tied to the Prime service that people need for ordering other things. Disney probably survives because it’s the one entertainment company that is a brand itself. Everything else is at risk (and we’re talking about behemoths like Comcast and Warner, much less individual teams attempting to go to market alone).

Not even the NFL, the one league that could conceivably go it alone direct to market, wants to do that anymore. It wants to sell all of its network and digital assets because it simply makes so much more money selling its content to the networks and Amazon and Google (for Sunday Ticket) than doing it alone. That should be instructive to the Big Ten and SEC and their individual members as they certainly don’t have more market power than the NFL.

(11-19-2023 11:28 AM)esayem Wrote:  

(11-19-2023 10:37 AM)djsuperfly Wrote:  

(11-19-2023 10:19 AM)esayem Wrote:  

(11-19-2023 09:54 AM)djsuperfly Wrote:  

(11-19-2023 08:10 AM)esayem Wrote:  In the 30’s and beyond, I believe conference bundling will hit its ceiling and the repercussion of antiquated market adds will start affecting payouts, while singular large brands continue to increase their value. So we’ll be in a situation where it’s going to come down to unequal revenue sharing or solo deals. Solo deals with advanced technology allow more customization for the future sports fan.

Nope, because you can never make as much money when you move from a subsidized model to an unsubsidized one. It's simple math.

I mean, Disney has almost their whole library bundled on Disney+ and then they also bundle that together with other entertainment offerings Hulu and ESPN+--and still none of that is profitable.

So much of sports viewing (among those "large brands" you speak of) is casual viewers. For instance, I don't watch a lot of college basketball. But I do frequently watch UNC-Duke, because it is event viewing (just as in I don't watch a lot of golf but do watch Sunday of the Masters). But would I (and lots of other casual fans who watch now) subscribe to a UNC streaming service just to watch that game? Nope.

Disney? Who needs Disney when Notre Dame or USC go straight to consumer and incorporate students in media curriculum?

Disney, in a vacuum, wasn't the point. The point is streaming isn't profitable. Think about it this way:

RSNs were charging cable companies $2-$3 per subscriber. RSNs that have gone DTC are charging $20-$30 a month--or about 10x. ESPN (just ESPN--not ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNews, ACC Network, SEC Network) is $10 a month per cable subscriber. So, to maintain current profits that would be $100 a month for just ESPN content. I love sports, but I'm not paying that.

And the point is: right now, even though I don't watch much college basketball, I watch Duke-UNC because it's there on ESPN. I'm not, however, going to pay $20 a month, even for one month, to subscribe to a UNC Streaming service just to watch the game.

If you have 10 million-ish people watching The Game: how many of those are die-hard Michigan and Ohio State fans and how many of those are just casual viewers? I imagine if that game is only available on a Michigan Streaming service and an Ohio State Streaming service, that you have 1-2 million viewers tops.

Well I can tell you every bar-grill in the country will subscribe, so there is that.

Also, what's to prevent the Ohio State direct-to-consumer feed from being bundled with other apps/services?

You just championed unbundling. PAckaging Ohio State athletics with Purdue and Indiana athletics has a lot more synergy than packaging it with Batman and the Powerpuff Girls, or with JAne Austen adaptations or the Fast and the Furious movies.

Quote:Think about how much money universities already spend on production costs.

A drop in the bucket really, compared to the scale of what happens to sports media rights without the bundle. You're not going to produce revolutionary cost savings by dumping the ESPN and Fox and conference network crews and replacing them with grad students. (And even grad students might figure out that you're training them and giving them "experience" in a field with no jobs, because all the work gets done by the next crop of grad students)

Think of it this way: TV production costs are a meaningful line item in the Ohio University athletic budget. In the Ohio State athletic budget, not so much.

(11-19-2023 02:38 AM)Transic_nyc Wrote:  Now that their media deal is done the next question will be how will they work entering Cal, Stanford and Southern Methodist into their future schedules. There will be six years between the current contract and the new one. I think the Domers would want at least one trip into the state of Texas for those years.

Well, I think that depends on whether NBC-ND deal requires ND to play certain number of B10 teams.

(11-18-2023 10:36 PM)esayem Wrote:  

(11-18-2023 10:33 PM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  

(11-18-2023 06:59 PM)TerryD Wrote:  

(11-18-2023 05:39 PM)Wahoowa84 Wrote:  

(11-18-2023 04:45 PM)TerryD Wrote:  Several people on Twitter reporting the NBC deal is for $60 million a year

If true, when combined with the $17+ million a year from the ACC, that puts ND in P2 money range.

https://frontofficesports.com/notre-dame...20Peacock.

This article says that NBC payouts will double from the current level…to nearly $50M per year. Not quite as much as teams in the Big Ten, but enough to continue football independence.

Plus the $17+ million it gets from the ACC.

If the reported sums are correct, this deal is directly comparable to the media rights deals from the P2 when you factor in what ND is also getting from the ACC. It's a HUGE win for the Irish.

Yep. Independent media deals are the way of the future (and the past).

Naw, just for ND. How many schools have no conference history, would prefer to remain independent, and also have the clout to get a ND-like deal? ND is the only one. Look at the other "football factory" type schools. They're mostly large State Flagships, with a few Big 12/ACC privates mixed in. USC and PSU function more like publics from a football perspective, and they both have huge enrollment. ND is very small, VERY Catholic, and very Elite Academically. There's just no other school that fits that mold. It bugs a lot of people, and it seems like half of us spend endless time scheming to find a way to fit/coerce/convince them into a Conference 100% (rather than just 50% like they are now with the ACC), but I think it's just a cool and interesting quirk of CFB and US Colleges in general.

I am curious to see the details including

1. Financial terms
2. How many games on Peacock (I sense more ND games would be on Peacock)
3. required number of ND/B10 match ups if any

(11-18-2023 10:46 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(11-18-2023 10:36 PM)esayem Wrote:  

(11-18-2023 10:33 PM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  

(11-18-2023 06:59 PM)TerryD Wrote:  

(11-18-2023 05:39 PM)Wahoowa84 Wrote:  https://frontofficesports.com/notre-dame...20Peacock.

This article says that NBC payouts will double from the current level…to nearly $50M per year. Not quite as much as teams in the Big Ten, but enough to continue football independence.

Plus the $17+ million it gets from the ACC.

If the reported sums are correct, this deal is directly comparable to the media rights deals from the P2 when you factor in what ND is also getting from the ACC. It's a HUGE win for the Irish.

Yep. Independent media deals are the way of the future (and the past).

Eh - if we believe that Notre Dame is the most valuable brand in college football (and I believe that), then the fact that they’re only matching what Purdue and Mississippi State make means that they’re taking a substantial financial haircut in order to maintain independence. To be sure, there are institutional reasons outside of money as to why they insist on continuing to be independent. The entertainment business has continuously shown that bundling content makes more money, whether it was the cable bundle before, the conferences, the NFL, Netflix programs, etc. Notre Dame is a special situation in their *institutional* (NOT financial) reasons for going it alone. I wouldn’t apply it to schools like Ohio State or Alabama (if that’s what you’re trying to get at) - the Big Ten and SEC are going to continue to steamroll everyone other than Notre Dame whether people like it or not. I just think that end game will be finalized in the 2030s as opposed to conspiracy theorists that believe it’s always coming next Tuesday.

I'd put odds at something like:

20%: 2020s (probably closer to 2029 than 2024)
50%: 2030s
30%: 2040s, or later, or...never?

There's so much on the horizon right now, and any of the big potential changes could have significant knock on effects in strange and unexpected ways, too.

(11-19-2023 09:44 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  ... Why? Because human beings continuously show that they want consolidation of content and simplicity and, at a certain point, you’re no longer maximizing the value of your content if you’re going it alone. ...

It's that in part, but for sports competition it's not only that: for sports, it's also the fact that the actual "after the fact observable" value of licenses to show sports teams swing up and down based on how successful the team is during a given season.

Organize play as a conference, and sell the conference rights, and now when Team A has an in-conference loss, it automatically means that Team B has an in-conference win. The loss in value because Team A has not experienced a success in that game is partly offset by the gain in value because Team B has experienced a success.

Bundling school rights into a conference does not eliminate the swings in value ... the Big Ten is still better off if the best teams are tOSU and TSUN, or TSUN and Penn State, or tOSU and Penn State, than if the best teams are Iowa and Indiana. And not all of the contests are in-conference, so a conference as a whole will still have up and down years. But it cushions the swings in value.

And the contract is signed before the licensor can see how those swings in value are going to play out, so the contract with the smaller swings in value is worth a premium above the average value of all of the individual contracts, and that premium for a five to ten year contract is quite hefty.

The fact that Notre Dame does not earn substantially more than the average value of the Big Ten conference when it is easily worth much more than the average of Big Ten teams represents two haircuts: the bundling benefits on the consumer side, and the bundling benefits on the reduced volatility side.

(11-18-2023 10:54 PM)Scoochpooch1 Wrote:  

(11-18-2023 04:51 PM)TerryD Wrote:  Again, if true, Swarbrick has earned a statue near the stadium.

That amount will have been obtained without an exit fee, GOR buyout or having to join a conference.

No mention of a Big Ten scheding deal yet, if any.

Someone will always overpay for ND, anyone can broker their deals.

ND admittedly had a great year ratings-wise, but I bet they nearly doubled the avg ratings of the 2nd-3rd B1G game of the week this year. ~ $10m per game, compared to, what, ~ $25m per game for the 2nd or 3rd best B1G game in most weeks? This is a HUGE win for NBC, regardless of what they paid for it. $40m? $60m? $80m? Still a win, any way you slice it.

(11-19-2023 08:10 AM)esayem Wrote:  

(11-18-2023 10:46 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(11-18-2023 10:36 PM)esayem Wrote:  

(11-18-2023 10:33 PM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  

(11-18-2023 06:59 PM)TerryD Wrote:  Plus the $17+ million it gets from the ACC.

If the reported sums are correct, this deal is directly comparable to the media rights deals from the P2 when you factor in what ND is also getting from the ACC. It's a HUGE win for the Irish.

Yep. Independent media deals are the way of the future (and the past).

Eh - if we believe that Notre Dame is the most valuable brand in college football (and I believe that), then the fact that they’re only matching what Purdue and Mississippi State make means that they’re taking a substantial financial haircut in order to maintain independence. To be sure, there are institutional reasons outside of money as to why they insist on continuing to be independent. The entertainment business has continuously shown that bundling content makes more money, whether it was the cable bundle before, the conferences, the NFL, Netflix programs, etc. Notre Dame is a special situation in their *institutional* (NOT financial) reasons for going it alone. I wouldn’t apply it to schools like Ohio State or Alabama (if that’s what you’re trying to get at) - the Big Ten and SEC are going to continue to steamroll everyone other than Notre Dame whether people like it or not. I just think that end game will be finalized in the 2030s as opposed to conspiracy theorists that believe it’s always coming next Tuesday.

In the 30’s and beyond, I believe conference bundling will hit its ceiling and the repercussion of antiquated market adds will start affecting payouts, while singular large brands continue to increase their value. So we’ll be in a situation where it’s going to come down to unequal revenue sharing or solo deals. Solo deals with advanced technology allow more customization for the future sports fan.

You're looking at this like the ACC. Look at it from the SEC's perspective, and I think that's a better long term model. The SEC has so many Big Brands that we're guaranteed several big matchups each week. OU-Georgia? Florida-LSU? Tennessee-A&M? Texas-Alabama? It's every week. And CBS gave that up to pay more for a neverending diet of Michigan-UNLV?

The big caveat for either the SEC or B1G model is that it's very important that you not get too big. We've all been making these doom and gloom predictions about the ACC, well, what happens if only 2 teams every join the P2 b/c the B1G stops at 18 and so does the SEC? I have that as a low probability outcome, but it's not THAT low of a probability. It comes down to the value that any additional programs offer. Clemson-Alabama or FSU-UF (as a conference game) brings a LOT of value, those will often be the featured game of the week and have Title implications. How many other ACC programs can offer that? We talk about UNC and (insert name of another Magnificent 7 program here), but, really, any of those might end up diluting more than adding to the pie.

(11-19-2023 09:28 AM)TerryD Wrote:  

(11-18-2023 10:30 PM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  

(11-18-2023 05:06 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(11-18-2023 04:51 PM)TerryD Wrote:  Again, if true, Swarbrick has earned a statue near the stadium.

That amount will have been obtained without an exit fee, GOR buyout or having to join a conference.

No mention of a Big Ten scheding deal yet, if any.

I don't begrudge a guy a statue, he's been a Notre DAme fixture for a long time.

I do think he had good cards to play though. NBC is paying the Big Ten $350M a year for ~15 games, plus 8 Peacock games, and a couple CCGs over the course of the contract. At $60M per, Swarbrick is asking ~$10M per game (valuing the single Notre Dame Peacock game at zero), or less if you count the PEacock game in the average.

If NBC had made a bad decision and rejected Notre Dame's pretty reasonable offer, I think Swarbrick would have had suitors in Bristol and in the Fox offices ready to offer comparable money and afternoon kickoffs on Fox or ESPN.

What makes you guys think that Swarbrick negotiated this deal? They just hired Pete Bevacqua a few months ago, I'd wager that he handled things.

Bevacqua had nothing to do with it. He recused himself from the negotiations.

"Swarbrick will be succeeded as athletic director in 2024 by Pete Bevacqua, who came to the school from NBC. Swarbrick says negotiations on the new deal began when Bevacqua was still there as chairman of NBC Sports, then he recused himself after it was announced that he was moving to his alma mater as AD."

https://www.si.com/college/2023/11/18/no...p-nbc-2029

Bevacqua recused himself from handling the negotiations for NBC after announcing his ND move, not from handling the negotiations for ND after moving. One of the most valuable things he has to offer ND is his expertise in media rights negotiations, there's no way he would just sit this one out. That statement in the article was very poorly worded though, and it's entirely possible that Forde (not the sharpest tool in the shed) was a bit confused about it, himself.

(11-19-2023 01:14 PM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(11-19-2023 09:44 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  ... Why? Because human beings continuously show that they want consolidation of content and simplicity and, at a certain point, you’re no longer maximizing the value of your content if you’re going it alone. ...

It's that in part, but for sports competition it's not only that: for sports, it's also the fact that the actual "after the fact observable" value of licenses to show sports teams swing up and down based on how successful the team is during a given season.

Organize play as a conference, and sell the conference rights, and now when Team A has an in-conference loss, it automatically means that Team B has an in-conference win. The loss in value because Team A has not experienced a success in that game is partly offset by the gain in value because Team B has experienced a success.

Bundling school rights into a conference does not eliminate the swings in value ... the Big Ten is still better off if the best teams are tOSU and TSUN, or TSUN and Penn State, or tOSU and Penn State, than if the best teams are Iowa and Indiana. And not all of the contests are in-conference, so a conference as a whole will still have up and down years. But it cushions the swings in value.

And the contract is signed before the licensor can see how those swings in value are going to play out, so the contract with the smaller swings in value is worth a premium above the average value of all of the individual contracts, and that premium for a five to ten year contract is quite hefty.

The fact that Notre Dame does not earn substantially more than the average value of the Big Ten conference when it is easily worth much more than the average of Big Ten teams represents two haircuts: the bundling benefits on the consumer side, and the bundling benefits on the reduced volatility side.

Yes - that is another key point, too.

The lower value of ND rights-wise reflects the risk of peaks and valleys. When ND is in playoff contention and/or has multiple high profile games (like this season), it’s one of the best bargains in all of sports. However, when they’re in a valley or once they’re out of playoff contention, the ratings can drop precipitously.

In contrast, there is ALWAYS going to be a playoff race in the Big Ten or SEC as a whole. Maybe the teams change year-to-year, but a network buying a conference is holistically guaranteeing themselves important games from the beginning until the end every season no matter what. So, conferences are able to charge a premium for that in a way that individual schools aren’t able to do.

One of the biggest mistakes so many fans make (and I’ve said this many times before) is thinking that schools want to make the most money possible in great seasons. Outside of ND, that’s not correct at all. Instead, the main goal for schools is to have guaranteed media money year-to-year with as little risk as possible. The “risk” part is their own ticket sales, which are more highly tied to performance. They don’t want media money to be risked on top of that.

(11-19-2023 11:26 AM)esayem Wrote:  

(11-19-2023 10:52 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(11-19-2023 10:37 AM)djsuperfly Wrote:  

(11-19-2023 10:19 AM)esayem Wrote:  

(11-19-2023 09:54 AM)djsuperfly Wrote:  Nope, because you can never make as much money when you move from a subsidized model to an unsubsidized one. It's simple math.

I mean, Disney has almost their whole library bundled on Disney+ and then they also bundle that together with other entertainment offerings Hulu and ESPN+--and still none of that is profitable.

So much of sports viewing (among those "large brands" you speak of) is casual viewers. For instance, I don't watch a lot of college basketball. But I do frequently watch UNC-Duke, because it is event viewing (just as in I don't watch a lot of golf but do watch Sunday of the Masters). But would I (and lots of other casual fans who watch now) subscribe to a UNC streaming service just to watch that game? Nope.

Disney? Who needs Disney when Notre Dame or USC go straight to consumer and incorporate students in media curriculum?

Disney, in a vacuum, wasn't the point. The point is streaming isn't profitable. Think about it this way:

RSNs were charging cable companies $2-$3 per subscriber. RSNs that have gone DTC are charging $20-$30 a month--or about 10x. ESPN (just ESPN--not ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNews, ACC Network, SEC Network) is $10 a month per cable subscriber. So, to maintain current profits that would be $100 a month for just ESPN content. I love sports, but I'm not paying that.

And the point is: right now, even though I don't watch much college basketball, I watch Duke-UNC because it's there on ESPN. I'm not, however, going to pay $20 a month, even for one month, to subscribe to a UNC Streaming service just to watch the game.

If you have 10 million-ish people watching The Game: how many of those are die-hard Michigan and Ohio State fans and how many of those are just casual viewers? I imagine if that game is only available on a Michigan Streaming service and an Ohio State Streaming service, that you have 1-2 million viewers tops.

Look what happened to boxing. In the 1970s and early 1980s, top boxing matches were huge events on network TV. the biggest biggest events were on closed circuit TV, on ABC on tape-delay

HBO and Showtime came in with wads of cash, and the biggest events moved to Pay Per View and subscription-only HBO and Showtime. They made a ton of money, but the audience stopped growing and started dwindling. Boxing lost its audience.

Boxing had a very generation specific fanbase. It seems college football does as well.

CFB has a constant renewal of new fans that boxing did not. The big State schools typically have 30-50k students, with some even larger than that, and a whole lot of them go to school to learn Engineering and end up getting a degree in "the 7 reasons that Johnny Football was the greatest QB of all time"-ology.

(11-19-2023 12:56 PM)random asian guy Wrote:  

(11-19-2023 02:38 AM)Transic_nyc Wrote:  Now that their media deal is done the next question will be how will they work entering Cal, Stanford and Southern Methodist into their future schedules. There will be six years between the current contract and the new one. I think the Domers would want at least one trip into the state of Texas for those years.

Well, I think that depends on whether NBC-ND deal requires ND to play certain number of B10 teams.

They already have a trip in 2024 to College Station, Texas, on their schedule. I suspect that game will get a few more fans in attendance than would any trip to any venue in DFW.

(11-19-2023 02:03 PM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  

(11-19-2023 11:26 AM)esayem Wrote:  

(11-19-2023 10:52 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(11-19-2023 10:37 AM)djsuperfly Wrote:  

(11-19-2023 10:19 AM)esayem Wrote:  Disney? Who needs Disney when Notre Dame or USC go straight to consumer and incorporate students in media curriculum?

Disney, in a vacuum, wasn't the point. The point is streaming isn't profitable. Think about it this way:

RSNs were charging cable companies $2-$3 per subscriber. RSNs that have gone DTC are charging $20-$30 a month--or about 10x. ESPN (just ESPN--not ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNews, ACC Network, SEC Network) is $10 a month per cable subscriber. So, to maintain current profits that would be $100 a month for just ESPN content. I love sports, but I'm not paying that.

And the point is: right now, even though I don't watch much college basketball, I watch Duke-UNC because it's there on ESPN. I'm not, however, going to pay $20 a month, even for one month, to subscribe to a UNC Streaming service just to watch the game.

If you have 10 million-ish people watching The Game: how many of those are die-hard Michigan and Ohio State fans and how many of those are just casual viewers? I imagine if that game is only available on a Michigan Streaming service and an Ohio State Streaming service, that you have 1-2 million viewers tops.

Look what happened to boxing. In the 1970s and early 1980s, top boxing matches were huge events on network TV. the biggest biggest events were on closed circuit TV, on ABC on tape-delay

HBO and Showtime came in with wads of cash, and the biggest events moved to Pay Per View and subscription-only HBO and Showtime. They made a ton of money, but the audience stopped growing and started dwindling. Boxing lost its audience.

Boxing had a very generation specific fanbase. It seems college football does as well.

CFB has a constant renewal of new fans that boxing did not. The big State schools typically have 30-50k students, with some even larger than that, and a whole lot of them go to school to learn Engineering and end up getting a degree in "the 7 reasons that Johnny Football was the greatest QB of all time"-ology.

I do think boxing is a really good example. You could argue that a huge reason why boxing isn’t renewing fans is because it decided to put its matches behind a paywall in the 1980s at the exact same time that the generation growing up in that era suddenly had access to more TV content than ever via cable.

“Out of sight, out of mind” is an age-old axiom and that’s only going to be more the case for a world where it’s getting harder and harder to aggregate large numbers of viewers. That is what boggles my mind about so much of the discussion in this thread. The primary reason why the Big Ten and SEC are valued so highly is because they draw lots of viewers that *aren’t* hardcore college football fans. The NFL is the only property on all of television (not just sports) that is better than them at it. Putting them on a service that would reduce access to as broad of an audience as possible (and I mean premium games as opposed to the lower tier games on ESPN+ or Peacock) destroys what makes the Big Ten and SEC more valuable than the other conferences in the first place. Now, that doesn’t mean that tethering to old school linear television, but rather their streaming choices have to similarly have access to lots of casual viewers, such as Amazon or Netflix, as opposed to an MLS-style Apple deal that no one other than hardcore fans will pay for.

The BIG has that broadcasting deal with NBC. Does the BIG, with their hopes of adding Notre Dame in the future, view NBC’s lucrative extension to Notre Dame as supporting their expansion goals or view it as detriment?

To me, Notre Dame intends to remain fb independent for the long term. NBC is a major enabler along with the ACC whose ground is beginning to show widening cracks.

The BIG will dream on. Same with the ACC and how ESPN could press the factor. Notre Dame sees the gimmicks to lure them. They’ll take the advantageous parts, but won’t bite the carrots tied to fb conference membership. Notre Dame is more clever than their suitors.

(11-19-2023 02:55 PM)OdinFrigg Wrote:  The BIG has that broadcasting deal with NBC. Does the BIG, with their hopes of adding Notre Dame in the future, view NBC’s lucrative extension to Notre Dame as supporting their expansion goals or view it as detriment? ...

Neither ... those Big Ten "hopes" are "wouldn't it be nice" hopes ... fan forums are the world where they are tailoring their short term actions based on amping up the likelihood of ND joining, not Big Ten HQ.

ND joins a conference when there is no path to the national championship without being in a conference.

And while the Big Ten will jump on any opportunity that presents itself to actually push ND into the Big Ten, and will certainly not take an action that would lock ND out ...

... if there is an opportunity to push ND into a conference that might just as well end up with ND in the SEC or ACC, they will treat it like a live High Voltage AC line and won't come close to where they could even accidentally touch it.

(11-19-2023 02:55 PM)OdinFrigg Wrote:  The BIG has that broadcasting deal with NBC. Does the BIG, with their hopes of adding Notre Dame in the future, view NBC’s lucrative extension to Notre Dame as supporting their expansion goals or view it as detriment?

To me, Notre Dame intends to remain fb independent for the long term. NBC is a major enabler along with the ACC whose ground is beginning to show widening cracks.

The BIG will dream on. Same with the ACC and how ESPN could press the factor. Notre Dame sees the gimmicks to lure them. They’ll take the advantageous parts, but won’t bite the carrots tied to fb conference membership. Notre Dame is more clever than their suitors.

It amazes me that after over three decades of ND doing everything possible to avoid joining a football conference, some people keep hoping and expecting ND to abandon independence.

With a 12 team playoff, a new, big money NBC deal and a new, lucrative Under Armour deal happening in the past year or so, the trends are not good for those still holding out such hopes.

I am old enough to recall there were quite a few here, on Twitter and elsewhere who were absolutely certain over the past two years that ND would not get a deal near that amount and would have to knuckle under to the Big Ten or ACC.........

(11-19-2023 05:03 PM)TerryD Wrote:  

(11-19-2023 02:55 PM)OdinFrigg Wrote:  The BIG has that broadcasting deal with NBC. Does the BIG, with their hopes of adding Notre Dame in the future, view NBC’s lucrative extension to Notre Dame as supporting their expansion goals or view it as detriment?

To me, Notre Dame intends to remain fb independent for the long term. NBC is a major enabler along with the ACC whose ground is beginning to show widening cracks.

The BIG will dream on. Same with the ACC and how ESPN could press the factor. Notre Dame sees the gimmicks to lure them. They’ll take the advantageous parts, but won’t bite the carrots tied to fb conference membership. Notre Dame is more clever than their suitors.

It amazes me that after over three decades of ND doing everything possible to avoid joining a football conference, some people keep hoping and expecting ND to abandon independence.

With a 12 team playoff, a new, big money NBC deal and a new, lucrative Under Armour deal happening in the past year or so, the trends are not good for those still holding out such hopes.

I am old enough to recall there were quite a few here, on Twitter and elsewhere who were absolutely certain over the past two years that ND would not get a deal near that amount and would have to knuckle under to the Big Ten or ACC.........

I think some realignmentoligists have caught the millenarian bug. We don't have a lot of end-of-the-world religious cults these days, so mass upheaval in college sports scratches that itch to both A) be living in important, pivotal times and B) be one of the elect who knows what is To Be Revealed when the great day comes and the doubters all proven wrong.

Ten years ago it was the pleasing mathematical symmetry of 4 x 16, a 64 team college football system. Now it's 2 megaleagues, or more often (for some reason) 3 megaleagues and pretending that the Kansas-Duke-Arizona-Miami-Louisville league would be on the same plane as the SEC and Big TEn, rather than just left on the scrap heap.

Me, I like feedling my ego when I can guess correctly over a few years what's going to happen to the RSNs, what's going to happen to CBS Paramount, what's going to happen to Fox, what's going to happen to ESPN Disney. What happens to sports, and to college football, is mostly downstream from that.

But a lot of us are committed to our predictions on an almost religious basis, not on a probabilistic gambling basis. If Notre Dame isn't going to be forced into compliance with the Great Ineffable Plan today, well, maybe in 2029.

the Great Ineffable Plan is never wrong, never fails after all.

(11-19-2023 05:11 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(11-19-2023 05:03 PM)TerryD Wrote:  

(11-19-2023 02:55 PM)OdinFrigg Wrote:  The BIG has that broadcasting deal with NBC. Does the BIG, with their hopes of adding Notre Dame in the future, view NBC’s lucrative extension to Notre Dame as supporting their expansion goals or view it as detriment?

To me, Notre Dame intends to remain fb independent for the long term. NBC is a major enabler along with the ACC whose ground is beginning to show widening cracks.

The BIG will dream on. Same with the ACC and how ESPN could press the factor. Notre Dame sees the gimmicks to lure them. They’ll take the advantageous parts, but won’t bite the carrots tied to fb conference membership. Notre Dame is more clever than their suitors.

It amazes me that after over three decades of ND doing everything possible to avoid joining a football conference, some people keep hoping and expecting ND to abandon independence.

With a 12 team playoff, a new, big money NBC deal and a new, lucrative Under Armour deal happening in the past year or so, the trends are not good for those still holding out such hopes.

I am old enough to recall there were quite a few here, on Twitter and elsewhere who were absolutely certain over the past two years that ND would not get a deal near that amount and would have to knuckle under to the Big Ten or ACC.........

I think some realignmentoligists have caught the millenarian bug. We don't have a lot of end-of-the-world religious cults these days, so mass upheaval in college sports scratches that itch to both A) be living in important, pivotal times and B) be one of the elect who knows what is To Be Revealed when the great day comes and the doubters all proven wrong.

Ten years ago it was the pleasing mathematical symmetry of 4 x 16, a 64 team college football system. Now it's 2 megaleagues, or more often (for some reason) 3 megaleagues and pretending that the Kansas-Duke-Arizona-Miami-Louisville league would be on the same plane as the SEC and Big TEn, rather than just left on the scrap heap.

Me, I like feedling my ego when I can guess correctly over a few years what's going to happen to the RSNs, what's going to happen to CBS Paramount, what's going to happen to Fox, what's going to happen to ESPN Disney. What happens to sports, and to college football, is mostly downstream from that.

But a lot of us are committed to our predictions on an almost religious basis, not on a probabilistic gambling basis. If Notre Dame isn't going to be forced into compliance with the Great Ineffable Plan today, well, maybe in 2029.

the Great Ineffable Plan is never wrong, never fails after all.

As to the Bold and Underlined: We have one and it is believed the Iranian Ayatollah who hopes to usher in the 12th Caliphate, which will bring about the end times and Paradise, and that cat has nuclear potential. I yearn for the days of the Branch Davidians and Major Applewhite, or their predecessor James Jones. Those guys mostly just hurt themselves and their followers. The current one is problematic.

As to the Second Bold and Italicized: The networks are just working with the natural decline which is happening. Consolidation strengthens the upper echelon serving their purposes for enhanced national audience, serving the purposes of the NFL which no matter what people think need a viable feeder program for the filling of their ranks, and meets the needs of schools facing increased overhead from court rulings and changing times and inflated costs.

The third lesser conference was called an amalgamation conference by me because without one to clear the baseline of revenue the others could not coalesce as effectively. With the recent rulings from the courts it may not be needed if the increase in overhead is dramatic enough to cull the top 72 schools down to 56 or so. 2 Super Conferences could absorb that many without being too large.

And it's not prognostication when the direction has been singular for 30 years and now extraneous economic factors will naturally shrink the top tier even further.

The NBC deal only signals a potential direction for the Irish if we do indeed wind up with two conferences in an upper tier of 48-56 schools. Landing 60 million or not landing 60 million neither puts the Irish closer to full inclusion in a conference nor farther away from it, but it does mean that until 2030 NBC has a larger stake in them than ESPN or FOX.

Notre Dame will have little control over a 2 conference league should one form. And since continued rulings in the direction of pay for play are happening the formation of such seems likelier than not. The mission of the NCAA is now obsolete for the largest schools, and it's hold on hoops deleterious to profiting from that sport.

But we shall see. Watching the decline of old corporate chains has been the greatest influence in my observations of what is happening in football. We are now seeing a culling of inventory and a breaking of it into Premium Quality, Mid Range Quality, and Bargain Quality. Next will come the deletion of the Mid Range so that people will either subscribe for the Premium or stream for the bargain. And when larger still viable chains have bought up older and sometimes less effective chains (think SWC/Big 8 and PAC) that means the tiering of product is underway now. It's for profit now, so the rules of business will apply.

NBC has purchased more temporary leverage with Notre Dame. ESPN has purchased more temporary leverage with the SEC and ACC and FOX has it with the Big 10. ESPN and FOX agreed on T2 and T3 holdings, they are now called the Big 12. Now if the ACC eventually suffers defections they will join the Big 12 as future T2 & T3 rights, unless they rebrand as the premier hoops conference. It will be interesting to see what happens.

(11-19-2023 02:16 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(11-19-2023 02:03 PM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  

(11-19-2023 11:26 AM)esayem Wrote:  

(11-19-2023 10:52 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(11-19-2023 10:37 AM)djsuperfly Wrote:  Disney, in a vacuum, wasn't the point. The point is streaming isn't profitable. Think about it this way:

RSNs were charging cable companies $2-$3 per subscriber. RSNs that have gone DTC are charging $20-$30 a month--or about 10x. ESPN (just ESPN--not ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNews, ACC Network, SEC Network) is $10 a month per cable subscriber. So, to maintain current profits that would be $100 a month for just ESPN content. I love sports, but I'm not paying that.

And the point is: right now, even though I don't watch much college basketball, I watch Duke-UNC because it's there on ESPN. I'm not, however, going to pay $20 a month, even for one month, to subscribe to a UNC Streaming service just to watch the game.

If you have 10 million-ish people watching The Game: how many of those are die-hard Michigan and Ohio State fans and how many of those are just casual viewers? I imagine if that game is only available on a Michigan Streaming service and an Ohio State Streaming service, that you have 1-2 million viewers tops.

Look what happened to boxing. In the 1970s and early 1980s, top boxing matches were huge events on network TV. the biggest biggest events were on closed circuit TV, on ABC on tape-delay

HBO and Showtime came in with wads of cash, and the biggest events moved to Pay Per View and subscription-only HBO and Showtime. They made a ton of money, but the audience stopped growing and started dwindling. Boxing lost its audience.

Boxing had a very generation specific fanbase. It seems college football does as well.

CFB has a constant renewal of new fans that boxing did not. The big State schools typically have 30-50k students, with some even larger than that, and a whole lot of them go to school to learn Engineering and end up getting a degree in "the 7 reasons that Johnny Football was the greatest QB of all time"-ology.

I do think boxing is a really good example. You could argue that a huge reason why boxing isn’t renewing fans is because it decided to put its matches behind a paywall in the 1980s at the exact same time that the generation growing up in that era suddenly had access to more TV content than ever via cable.

“Out of sight, out of mind” is an age-old axiom and that’s only going to be more the case for a world where it’s getting harder and harder to aggregate large numbers of viewers. That is what boggles my mind about so much of the discussion in this thread. The primary reason why the Big Ten and SEC are valued so highly is because they draw lots of viewers that *aren’t* hardcore college football fans. The NFL is the only property on all of television (not just sports) that is better than them at it. Putting them on a service that would reduce access to as broad of an audience as possible (and I mean premium games as opposed to the lower tier games on ESPN+ or Peacock) destroys what makes the Big Ten and SEC more valuable than the other conferences in the first place. Now, that doesn’t mean that tethering to old school linear television, but rather their streaming choices have to similarly have access to lots of casual viewers, such as Amazon or Netflix, as opposed to an MLS-style Apple deal that no one other than hardcore fans will pay for.

I'm not arguing that being on OTA is a big deal or that it's not a huge positive for CFB, I'm just saying that CFB is tough to compare to boxing. A big public might have 500k living alumni, plus millions more in-state who all support the "State U" on some level. Boxing, once it was off the air, had nothing other than the gym rats who were in golden gloves as kids or whatever.