Learfield Sports the official multimedia rights holder for Illinois

[Dan]

Illini AD Mike Thomas on WDWS Saturday Sportsline-

"Really it's an opportunity for us. We were one of the few schools in the country that did our multimedia in-house. When you outsource it -- as we are in this case -- you do lose a little bit of control, but your opportunity to increase your debt-revenue stream grows significantly."

"We anticipate in year one -- with revenues and dollars saved, because they absorb all of our costs -- we're going to be north of $2M dollars in increase..That should grow in the future."

Starts 53:00-
http://www.wdws.com/audio/2012-08-04...ne-8-4-12.html

Learfield Sports: Illinois

Fighting Illini Sports Properties is the official multimedia rights holder for University of Illinois Athletics. We provide a customized plan to meet your marketing objectives using our numerous assets: signage, FightingIllini.com, television, radio, promotions, titleship, digital assets, social media, television and more.

# http://learfieldsports.com/partners/...ts-properties/
# Marketing Opportunities

[FeelYourPaign]

A $2 Million better budget sure sounds good to me !

[DanvIllini]

MT

[illinicb]

Originally Posted by Dan

Illini AD Mike Thomas on WDWS Saturday Sportsline-

"Really it's an opportunity for us. We were one of the few schools in the country that did our multimedia in-house. When you outsource it -- as we are in this case -- you do lose a little bit of control, but your opportunity to increase your debt-revenue stream grows significantly."

"We anticipate in year one -- with revenues and dollars saved, because they absorb all of our costs -- we're going to be north of $2M dollars in increase..That should grow in the future."

Starts 53:00-
http://www.wdws.com/audio/2012-08-04...ne-8-4-12.html

Didn't DIA do this a few years ago (with my memory, give or take twenty years) and the company went bankrupt and the DIA never saw the money? IIRC that is why they brought it back in house. From looking at Learfield's website Learfield . they have at least developed a reasonable platform of "partners". I haven't listened to the podcast yet, so maybe this was discussed.

[illinicb]

Originally Posted by illinicb

Didn't DIA do this a few years ago (with my memory, give or take twenty years) and the company went bankrupt and the DIA never saw the money? IIRC that is why they brought it back in house. From looking at Learfield's website Learfield . they have at least developed a reasonable platform of "partners". I haven't listened to the podcast yet, so maybe this was discussed.

I have now listened to the podcast and it sounds like the DIA was involved with Learfield previously, but no mention of any prior financial issues.

They did talk a bit about compliance in the context of a PSU discussion and it was good to hear MT confirm his committment to running a clean program. I guess I wouldn't expect him to say anything different, but good to hear none the less.

[RHITIllini]

For all the people who were ready to crucify Mike Thomas a few months back, he's looking like he's doing a pretty damn good job now.

[carmelillini]

Do they design logos?

[The Stork]

A few trivia nuggets on the Learfield switch:

-Learfield has distributed Fighting Illini football and basketball broadcasts to the network for years; I don't have an exact count, but I'd say going back into the late 80s at least. Their lone purpose was the middleman to get the broadcasts to affiliates. Originally sharing a satellite channel with the St. Louis Cardinals (with a backup channel for Sep/Oct/Mar/Apr,) the Illini gained their own channel when the Cards left for Skyview Networks distribution before the 2011 season. Games were produced on-site by Ed Bond and the WDWS crew (including all commercials and the lone automation relay to trigger local commercials and the end of the broadcast) and sent to Learfield's headquarters in Jefferson City, MO for uplink to the satellite. Learfield produces their own game broadcasts (adding commercial elements, automation relays, etc) at Jeff City; I'm not sure if this will change for the Illini, or if Ed Bond will continue to fire Carle Sports Medicine spots off his iPad sitting next to the announce team.

-Learfield is pretty much the biggest name in the game at this point, slowly acquiring rights to more and more schools over the past few years, and their production, while pretty generic across the brands, is first-rate. There is no better partner - period - for the Illini. Saluki fans can testify to the rise in quality of SIU broadcasts over the past few years since Learfield took over the rights for the 2008-09 school year; their production quality dwarfs the Illini Sports Network. Many Illinois fans have complained about the length of pre and post game shows, particularly on the network where much of the programming heard in Chambana is absent. To compare: when SIU visited Memorial Stadium, the Learfield SIU pregame was on a half-hour before the Illini broadcast, and ended a half-hour later. This was shorter than the previous year's TWO HOUR Saluki Football pregame show. Learfield does not scrimp.

-That said, this year's football broadcasts will not differ too much. We'll find out Saturday if the pregame and postgame broadcast sounds slicker (you may hear the broadcast open up with the deep throat, "From Learfield Sports...") but the network pregame is still a half-hour long and the postgame will not be much longer. The in-game commercial format remains the same as in previous years, with the addition of :10 Legal ID breaks around the top of the hour (now possible because there are three automation relays - BREAK, LEGAL and END GAME - rather than just one thanks to the Cardinals previously taking all the relay space. The Blues suffer from the same issue the Illini used to.) Commercial cues will be the same with "...from Learfield Sports" tagged on the end, a cumbersome burden I wish they would leave off. Local WDWS programming is separate of Learfield's offerings and should not change, at least not because of Learfield's rights.

-All of this happened last minute and came as a surprise to some affiliates. I would expect any major changes to the network broadcast to come for basketball, or perhaps not even until 2013 football.