SEC & ESPN Deal's Effects

[ddann]

University of Arkansas has been a horrible fit for the SEC. Perennial doormats and have never been able to take advantage of being in the SEC for recruiting purposes.

Well, to be fair, they did have a decent little run several years ago, but for some reason, they couldn’t seem to sustain it...

 

[memphisbred]

Another question, what does this do to CBS as the historical home of the SEC??

just what i was thinking

 

[Tetragrammaton Cane]

University of Arkansas has been a horrible fit for the SEC. Perennial doormats and have never been able to take advantage of being in the SEC for recruiting purposes.

True. They brought in an excellent basketball program, the best Track and Field/CC program and a “good” football program and now…nothing. What a fall.

Losing traditional rivals like TX and aTm I’m sure were big, but like Crowe says above, “…there’s 5 Texases over there…”

 

[Deleted member 26015]

Well, to be fair, they did have a decent little run several years ago, but for some reason, they couldn’t seem to sustain it...

Every time I see this ****, I have a strong urge to take a 12-pound ****e to honor him.

 

[Dghustla]

Meh, honestly all they did was steal the major the Rivalry games from CBS.

And they basically have first dibs on all SEC games.

this is bigger news to CBS than anyone else.

 

[warpigs58]

I will be amazed if ESPN can honor the agreement and isn’t bankrupt before it starts. If ESPN want owned by Disney they would have gone out of business a long time ago.

 

[theibisrules]

Can we beat Notre Dame 58-7 again?

They won't play us

 

[DomWorld_Peace]

I’d love to see the ACC reach an agreement with CBS or NBC in addition to their deal with ESPN.

Well ya see, ACC already signed its life away for the foreseeable future being a third world conference.

 

[Miami04]

I will be amazed if ESPN can honor the agreement and isn’t bankrupt before it starts. If ESPN want owned by Disney they would have gone out of business a long time ago.

Part of the deal is they are going to put some SEC games on ESPN+ so that means they are going to force people to subscribe to online. That will help them.
But I agree with your point.

 

[JOE'CANE]

Communist!!!

 

[DTP]

ESPN is banking on this deal to sell more online subscriptions. It’s risky considering the huge contracts they paid for other conference rights and the playoff rights is one of the main things bankrupting the company. The TV audience for sporting events is at critical mass. Paying more and more for TV rights when the audience isn’t getting any bigger is going to be the downfall of ESPN eventually. Unless they can get more people to pay for premium content on their streaming service

 

[OriginalCanesCanesCanes]

Meh, honestly all they did was steal the major the Rivalry games from CBS.

And they basically have first dibs on all SEC games.

this is bigger news to CBS than anyone else.

Best post on the subject

 

[fedupcane]

Sports viewership as a whole is going down bc the NBA and the NFL are basically one player sports now (if you have mahomes or lebron you win and nothing else matters), and the NCAA has been the same three top teams winning for ten years now. All three are painfully predictable in 95% of the games. Boring as fvck.

The irony is the one non salary capped sport, baseball, has significantly more parity than any other sport.

 

[hotshot]

One thing that will help is a conference that has a better commissioner. Whereas the SEC is all about promoting its brand, the ACC takes every opportunity to dilute its own reputation. I know I've said it a dozen times over the past two weeks but it bears repeating. Any remaining shred of the ACC's tattered reputation- which is based entirely on Clemson at this point- will be destroyed if ND wins the ACC Championship (Miami isn't given an ounce of respect, which is why a G5 team like Cincy that has not played a single P5 this year is ranked ahead of us). An independent team given a one year membership will have beaten every team in the conference, taken the title, and left. It was such an unbelievably stupid decision to let ND in- and even if they let them in, they should have been forced to play all the best teams on the road. Why would the ACC want to give them an opportunity to embarrass the conference? It's not a coincidence that Miami's decline is tied to joining the ACC. It's a basketball conference that thinks it is the Ivy League of the P5s.

Would you rather Miami still be in the All America Conference, or be an independent like BYU? What was the choice, then or now?

 

[dstuart4]

Would you rather Miami still be in the All America Conference, or be an independent like BYU? What was the choice, then or now?

This is true. The Big Least was going to fail, there isn't much money to be made from schools like UConn and Rutgers. And the $EC wasn't going to have Miami come in and threaten the established order: Bama, LSU, Georgia, FL, etc. just a year after we won the title and had another stolen from us. The Big 12? Nah. A school might survive as an independent , but prosper? You have to have a conference affiliation, look at ND, if they didn't have ACC, where would they be this year? Joining the ACC in 2004 was the right move. Still can't stand them, Though.

 

[Handsome Squidbum]

I’d love to see the ACC reach an agreement with CBS or NBC in addition to their deal with ESPN.

Disney would cut the ACC off at the knees if it tried that. They already have their prize in the SEC. I think the Big 12 did the best job of hedging its bet of all the conferences. They have a relatively short term deal but still are solidly in 3rd place revenue-wise, and that's without including the Tier 3 rights of Oklahoma and Texas (so in total, they might be on par with or even ahead of the SEC). From the article I attached below- "Every school in the Big 12 makes more off its third-tier deal than each school in the Pac-12 makes off the league owned-and-operated Pac-12 Network." The Big 12 teams have their main TV deals, but the conference also allows teams to have their own side deals. So if Big 12 teams acknowledge the fact that cable TV is dying and online streaming is the future, they are in good position to take advantage of it. This is a good article about where the money is going to be in the coming years:

Power 5 counting on Silicon Valley to keep them rich

As cable channels like ESPN lose subscribers, college football conferences will likely need new platforms like Google and Amazon to keep their revenue for broadcast rights growing.

www.si.com

Of note- the conference in the one of the worst positions for the future is the ACC. They locked themselves into a deal with ESPN until 2036.

@hotshot If I was coming up with the 10 year business plan for Miami football, it would involve

1) exiting the ACC for the Big 12
2) Getting together with the other interested teams and maybe some independents (BYU, Army, Liberty, UCONN, New Mex State, UMass, basically all of them but ND) to sign a deal with the major streaming services (Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu) for Tier 3 rights.

 

[PhenomCane]

Disney would cut the ACC off at the knees if it tried that. They already have their prize in the SEC. I think the Big 12 did the best job of hedging its bet of all the conferences. They have a relatively short term deal but still are solidly in 3rd place revenue-wise, and that's without including the Tier 3 rights of Oklahoma and Texas (so in total, they might be on par with or even ahead of the SEC). From the article I attached below- "Every school in the Big 12 makes more off its third-tier deal than each school in the Pac-12 makes off the league owned-and-operated Pac-12 Network." The Big 12 teams have their main TV deals, but the conference also allows teams to have their own side deals. So if Big 12 teams acknowledge the fact that cable TV is dying and online streaming is the future, they are in good position to take advantage of it. This is a good article about where the money is going to be in the coming years:

Power 5 counting on Silicon Valley to keep them rich

As cable channels like ESPN lose subscribers, college football conferences will likely need new platforms like Google and Amazon to keep their revenue for broadcast rights growing.

www.si.com

Of note- the conference in the one of the worst positions for the future is the ACC. They locked themselves into a deal with ESPN until 2036.

@hotshot If I was coming up with the 10 year business plan for Miami football, it would involve

1) exiting the ACC for the Big 12
2) Getting together with the other interested teams and maybe some independents (BYU, Army, Liberty, UCONN, New Mex State, UMass, basically all of them but ND) to sign a deal with the major streaming services (Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu) for Tier 3 rights.

The only ACC games ESPN doesn't carry is the bottom tier Raycom games that air on the Regional Sports Networks. That deal expires in 2026-27. Look for ESPN to try to get those games too once that deal expires.