Not sure that this is true. With the btn2go infrastructure already in place they can easily go to a streaming network platform. The cash cow of cable subscription fees is dying quickly, but I would still say We're ahead of the game
B1G Media Rights / Comcast / Conference Realignment
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Not sure that this is true. With the btn2go infrastructure already in place they can easily go to a streaming network platform. The cash cow of cable subscription fees is dying quickly, but I would still say We're ahead of the game
That could be true, but as things become a la carte, everything becomes more niche, and paying $20 a month for ESPN when you don't really care about college sports or baseball or whatever doesn't make a ton of economic sense.
The more likely bundle IMO would be local. All the Chicago teams band together for an over-the-top streaming service. It would be really, really expensive though, to maintain current revenue levels.
The sports industry generally is in a shaky spot.
Explain why geographic coverage would be an advantage in a world where all Big Ten content is an over-the-top subscription service whose revenues are divided evenly among however many members there are.
The concept of geographic coverage and the cable rights fee scam are one and the same.
Of course, they wouldn't just charge a reasonable fee as you suggest but probably $10.99 or higher.
This probably does not belong here but I discovered something by accident. I won't go into the background story. I cut the cord years ago but my sister still has Comcast. She goes to Florida for the winter and puts Comcast on "hiatus" meaning essentially that it is off up here. But I discovered if I set up a recording of an Illinois game (or anything really) that it sill records the program even though it does not display it on the tv. So I recorded some of the games over this past winter and was able to watch them that way. I know I could not do that the previous year. Something changed and hopefully it doesn't change again next year.
And to being overrated every year. Year after year. But I guess I am really getting off topic.
I'll give you that, but I think that's often overstated. And it's not worth more than meaningfully higher per-school media revenues.
If you have an expanded geographic footprint, you pick up additional eyeballs who are interested in your product for one of two reasons: they are B1G fans or they are fans of college sports in general.
Penn State, Nebraska and Maryland are strong regional brands with large alumni bases and passionate fan bases. Rutgers fans are not as passionate and their brand is not strong, but they have a large enough alumni base to never become completely worthless regionally. And when their teams are good, their fans do come out to support them. Right now, wrestling is probably their strongest sport and joining the B1G has been a huge lift to their program. They draw lots of fans for home meets and have a very enthusiastic fan base. The same thing happened when they had their run of success in football with Schiano.
The B1G expanding into new areas like the heartland (Nebraska) and the Mid-Atlantic brings more eyeballs into play, just from a numbers perspective. Also, adding teams like Penn State and Nebraska in football and Maryland in basketball brings more national interest from the casual fans.
I understand the sentimental attachment to the old Big Ten, but nowadays it's all about expanding your inventory and increasing your reach and the B1G has done that better than anyone except maybe the SEC.
The important thing is the B1G hasn't lost any schools like the Big 12 or the ACC. You can always go back to the traditional ten schools if you really wanted to (don't see it happening), but it takes a long time to woo and integrate new schools into the conference, and a school that is available now may not be available later, as we've found out over the years.
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I don't think they have Comcast there (or their presence is small). Their main cable providers are Cox and Charter, iirc.
Probably the same for Iowa.
Exactly. That's the thing that people are really not understanding. Paying a la carte for channels would be way more expensive, unless you only wanted a few channels. And not bundling niche channels with the most popular ones would probably kill off many of the niche channels, which would give consumers a lot fewer choices.
Look at the Netflix model. You pay one fairly low price and you are paying for a lot of content that you have no interest in. But if you only purchased every show and movie that you watched a la carte you would actually end up paying a lot more, unless you chose to barely watch anything.
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The Galloping Ghost
- Washington, DC
Honest question, have you ever lived in the Mid-Atlantic? As someone that grew up in the DC area (Northern Virginia), went to Illinois, and now lives in DC proper, the Big Ten has always had a huge representation here, due in part to Midwestern ex-pats, and it's only gotten substantially stronger now that Maryland is a member. No, it's not the only game in town, but that's not possible in a town with people from all over the country. It's a similar situation in Philly and NYC.
Midwesterners romanticise a bygone era that's been dead for 20 years. The funny thing is, every major conference once "evoke[d] a specific history and specific imagery in a specific part of the country."
Look at every conference now, each has expanded their footprint into to somewhat dubious locations: Colorado and Utah are in the Pac12; Missouri and Texas A&M in the SEC; Louisville in the ACC; West Virginia in the Big 12. For every single one of those examples, you can say X region will never be X conference country. Till, over time, those regions are.
Comparatively, the Big Ten is almost entirely contiguous and took much more like-minded institutions in areas where the conference already has a presence.
If you combine the fan bases of Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, Indiana, Maryland and Rutgers the B1G actually has a pretty substantial presence in New York City.
In fact, a 2017 study found that the most popular school in New York City is Michigan.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-is-new-yorks-favorite-college-team-1505487226
You do of course add total eyeballs. The question is whether you add per-school eyeballs with the pie needing to be split 14 ways instead of 12. There can be no serious doubt that that's not the case with Maryland and Rutgers. However, in terms of marginal cable subscription fees added, they might as well have been Alabama and Florida State. That is why the Big Ten made that move, but the clock is about two seconds from midnight on that particular scam.
I don't think that cuts in the direction you think it does. When you think about watching the 2:30 SEC on CBS game, it's not in hopes of seeing Mizzou, a school that is close to us and which has rivalry ties with our Illini. You want the paradigmatic Saturday Down South experience, The Grove, warm weather, those baton twirling gals that sit up by the band for some reason, row after row of khaki-clad fratboys with the exact same haircut, amazing reaction shots from impeccably dressed old ladies, the whole bit.It's more than just good football teams, it's a brand, it's a specific type of experience. And now it's something there is national access to. You can be an SEC football fan in Illinois. Putting teams closer to Illinois has nothing to do with it.
The Big Ten has a different brand (wind, fall colors, unruly student sections, three yards and a cloud of dust, something about the way the games sound and the way they're lit feels distinct), but it's the same concept. That vibe you get from Big Ten football telecasts totally shaped my idea of what college was and what sort of college I wanted to go to someday when I was a kid.
In the grand scheme of things, America's love of college sports makes no sense. The campuses are in small towns, relatively few people actually attended those schools, and the talent level and quality of the games aren't even close to the pro game. It is minor league sports. It's the strength of the branding that makes it go. The quirks and foibles and folk traditions of college football and basketball stir emotions in a way other minor league sports cannot. The college sports business will dilute and forget this at their peril. Applying the cold logic of business to college sports is missing the point. Perfecting it would destroy it.
New York barely cares about the Mets, they certainly don't care about college sports. That's not going to be the driver of a model where you have to monetize genuine committed interest in sitting down and watching your games.
But if you can steal a buck per month out of the wallet of every single cable subscriber in the Tri-State area whether they care about college sports or not? Now that's a bonanza. But the jig is up.
By the way, we can't have this conversation without adding this context
There are more reasons for that decline than just the shredding of decades-old traditions in search of instant gratification injections of cash for conference realignment, the football playoff, conference title games, big neutral site games, expanding the NCAA tournament field, etc. But the fact that those things are never even MENTIONED shows you that there is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the nature of the product they're selling actually is.
I'm not sure if you're right, from a business standpoint, but you make a great sales pitch! :thumb:
The Galloping Ghost
- Washington, DC
While I disagree with S&C's overall premise, I was thinking the same thing lol.
The Galloping Ghost
- Washington, DC
Every single cable network is having to restructure how they do business. Look at ESPN, carriers are already moving away from offering it on their basic package and the network is having to cut costs drastically, not to mention create new streaming services to add revenue. That's just the nature of technology today.
We're lucky the BTN was the first and able to establish itself well before every other conference created their own network. Being first, the BTN was able to not only make a huge amount of money, but create a user base that has become accustomed to the channel and are now more likely to buy a monthly streaming subscription.
Nothing happening to the BTN is any different than what's happening to cable at large. Comcast isn't dropping the BTN because the product has been diluted. As has been shown, the addition of schools has been a net positive for the conference, even if the conference doesn't feel the same to some.
The BTN will adapt and the Big Ten will continue to make more money than every other conference. At the end of the day, as long as the Big Ten is making more than every other conference, we're golden.
We're lucky the BTN was the first and able to establish itself well before every other conference created their own network. Being first, the BTN was able to not only make a huge amount of money, but create a user base that has become accustomed to the channel and are now more likely to buy a monthly streaming subscription.
Nothing happening to the BTN is any different than what's happening to cable at large. Comcast isn't dropping the BTN because the product has been diluted. As has been shown, the addition of schools has been a net positive for the conference, even if the conference doesn't feel the same to some.
The BTN will adapt and the Big Ten will continue to make more money than every other conference. At the end of the day, as long as the Big Ten is making more than every other conference, we're golden.
haasi
- New York
At the end of the day, this is the question we are disagreeing on, and only time will tell.
But I do think the whole sports business in general is heading toward some rocky times.
The Galloping Ghost
- Washington, DC
Agreed. All sports leagues are going to have to drastically restructure how they do business now that they can't rely on cable company contracts like they used to.
It'll be fascinating to see how it all plays out.
Comcast just took a large dump down Jim Delaney's throat and he will have to swallow it.
That's true in a sense, with football not starting until September, but the conference starts losing those subscriber fees NOW.
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