Conference TV Ratings

[kingottoiii]

Got this from the Pitt Board (see page 9)

I was amazed at the P12 new contract before. After seeing these numbers even more so. Have to think the ACC has some bargaining power. The BE is screwed.

 

[Scooch]

Keep in mind that there are a lot of factors that influence ratings.

Is the game on broadcast or cable?

Is it national cable, or regional?

How many games make up those averages?

Was there 1 or 2 outlier games that pushed the average up or down substantially?

Was there an outlier OOC game that's getting attributed to one conference that's helping it's average?

Point is that there's a lot of nuance to ratings. They also ebb and flow across seasons. A pretty bar chart is nice, but it's simplistic.

 

[OrangePA]

Got this from the Pitt Board (see page 9)

I was amazed at the P12 new contract before. After seeing these numbers even more so. Have to think the ACC has some bargaining power. The BE is screwed.

ACC does better than Pac 12.

Good!

 

[riskylogic]

Although the ACC is a close second, the BE does own the highest basketball-to-football ratio. Oh wait, this is the football board... sorry.

 

[Scooch]

ACC does better than Pac 12.

Good!

Like I said, there's a lot of nuance to looking at these things.

 

[sutomcat]

Keep in mind that there are a lot of factors that influence ratings.

Is the game on broadcast or cable?

Is it national cable, or regional?

How many games make up those averages?

Was there 1 or 2 outlier games that pushed the average up or down substantially?

Was there an outlier OOC game that's getting attributed to one conference that's helping it's average?

Point is that there's a lot of nuance to ratings. They also ebb and flow across seasons. A pretty bar chart is nice, but it's simplistic.

Let's talk about conference TV revenue. Specifically the Big East.

The Pac 10 recently got $4 billion for 12 years. I have never seen it broken out into yearly revenue per school, so I tried to determine this based on the famous ESPN $1 billion offer for 9 years to the Big East that was turned down last summer.

The existing BE contract pays the football schools double what the basketball schools get. If you assume that the new contract would have done the same, to get yearly revenue for each school, I believe you take the $111 million payout per year and divide it by 24. The basketball schools would then get one share each and the football schools two.

Assuming all this is correct, the contract the Big East turned down would have paid the football schools $9.2 million annually and the basketball schools $4.6 million. Well over double what they are getting now but well below what the big conferences are getting.

Assuming that Temple is added and Louisville leaves, which I think is a reasonable expectation, the net effect of all of the changes is that the Big East goes from being an 8 school football league to a 12 school football league, but there is really only one new all sports member (this also assumes Temple will play all sports...I have read reports indicating this may or may not happen but they would be crazy to not demand this and the Big East is in a poor bargaining position right now).

Not sure how they will split revenue with the football only schools. I assume they will get more than the basketball schools but not as much as the all sports schools. If you split it down the middle and give the hoops schools 2 units, the football onlys 3 and the all sports 4, and the BE gets the same $1 billion offer, the breakdown of revenue changes as follows:

basketball schools: $3.6 million
football only schools: $5.6 million
all sports schools: $7.2 million

What does this mean? The Big East is going to need to have the offer they turned down last summer doubled ($2 billion) in order to get on roughly equal footing with the ACC.

Some rough numbers to keep in mind...

If the Big East gets a deal for $1.25 billion, the all sports schools get about $9.1 million annually. Given the smaller slices of revenue each school gets with the expansion for football, the Big East needs to get an extra $250 million to get back to close to the revenue levels of the turned down contract.

If the Big East gets a deal for $1.5 billion, the all sports schools get $10.9 million annually. With the extra travel costs of the extra expanded conference, this is probably close to bringing the same value as the turned down contract.

Scooch, do you have any prediction on what the Big East will end up getting for its TV revenue rights later this year?

 

[Scooch]

Great analysis Tom.

Honestly, I have no idea what will transpire for the BE's new contract. I'm not revealing any state secrets to suggest that it will be heavily influenced by how much Comcast or News Corp (or Google, think on that) wants to add inventory to their sports nets/sites.

I don't suspect you're going to see Pac-12 dollars-esque in play, though.

 

[shantydaze]

Keep in mind that there are a lot of factors that influence ratings.

Is the game on broadcast or cable?

Is it national cable, or regional?

How many games make up those averages?

Was there 1 or 2 outlier games that pushed the average up or down substantially?

Was there an outlier OOC game that's getting attributed to one conference that's helping it's average?

Point is that there's a lot of nuance to ratings. They also ebb and flow across seasons. A pretty bar chart is nice, but it's simplistic.

My first thought when looking at the averages was that the BE's expansion plan of adding markets instead of interesting or brand teams failed. Even after looking at your comments, I am not sure I am wrong. Just because you have a market with 20 million viewers, if no one has the game tuned in, it does not matter. The strength of the teams also drive the broadcast partners, whether the game can be seen nationally or regionally, and the interest in OOC/Bowl games.

As you point out, though, ratings can be fluid from year to year based on the success of the teams in the conference.

 

[SU2NASA]

Let's talk about conference TV revenue. Specifically the Big East.

Fantastic breakdown. What I don't think a lot of people get is that the networks don't care about per team revenue, they care about value of the teams. They're not going to increase their offer to the Big East by 50% just because there are 50% more football schools. I don't see how the Sun Beast schools are going to even equal what the previous offer was per school. You could even argue that with what they've lost and what they've resorted to backfill that the offer may be lower, with more mouths to feed.

 

[BORZAK]

GLAD WE MADE IT OUT!!!!

 

[baggerbob]

a point they made at the bottom of one of those graphs is football viewers are 75% over the age of 35.