redwingillini11
White and Sixth
- North Aurora
Conference Realignment
- Status
Joel Goodson
- ties will be resolved
yeah, I think at this point it's just reaching a deal. doesn't imply that that will be cake, but I'm expecting a deal.
am very interested in what goes down with the Bay area schools: a lot more unknowns there
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Epsilon
M tipping over
- Pdx
Of course, as an Illini fan we would have been relegated to the worst options available the last couple decades (on the whole), but I’m talking about the B1G as a whole.
The far more interesting question to me is where does this all end up in ten years?
Content delivery is in a transition phase. Clearly, the audience for cable and over-the-air networks is shrinking, and will continue to do so. That reduces the money that networks can pay for rights. ESPN, for example, has lost 25 million subscribers over the past decade (from 100mm to 75mm), and that rate of loss is accelerating. What happens when its down to 50 million . . . or 40 million?
Streaming is growing, and as technology continues to improve, will continue to grow. This is where the current race will end, but it just isn't clear how close to the end we really are. For decades, the over-the-air networks held the majority of market share. Since the 90s, its been cable/satellite. Some time in the relatively near future -- 5 years? 10? 15? -- streaming will overtake cable.
Once the market gets there, won't conferences, or maybe even some individual schools themselves, want to take production and delivery of their content in house, to eliminate paying the middlemen? What does this mean for how conferences should structure themselves in the future? Apple is giving the PAC a look at that future right now. The PAC might not be quite ready to dive into that pool . . . but the MLS pretty much did.
I think the B1G is positioning itself well for this eventuality, already having its own network infrastructure, and a lot of marquee-name content. How this translates into dollars to schools . . . we'll need to wait and see.
Content delivery is in a transition phase. Clearly, the audience for cable and over-the-air networks is shrinking, and will continue to do so. That reduces the money that networks can pay for rights. ESPN, for example, has lost 25 million subscribers over the past decade (from 100mm to 75mm), and that rate of loss is accelerating. What happens when its down to 50 million . . . or 40 million?
Streaming is growing, and as technology continues to improve, will continue to grow. This is where the current race will end, but it just isn't clear how close to the end we really are. For decades, the over-the-air networks held the majority of market share. Since the 90s, its been cable/satellite. Some time in the relatively near future -- 5 years? 10? 15? -- streaming will overtake cable.
Once the market gets there, won't conferences, or maybe even some individual schools themselves, want to take production and delivery of their content in house, to eliminate paying the middlemen? What does this mean for how conferences should structure themselves in the future? Apple is giving the PAC a look at that future right now. The PAC might not be quite ready to dive into that pool . . . but the MLS pretty much did.
I think the B1G is positioning itself well for this eventuality, already having its own network infrastructure, and a lot of marquee-name content. How this translates into dollars to schools . . . we'll need to wait and see.
Epsilon
M tipping over
- Pdx
True, but I still find most of his posts informative.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
Broadly supported the Nebraska addition at the time (which I regret in retrospect), and completely understood the logic.
Hated the Rutgers and Maryland additions, totally understood the logic, just thought that logic was badly mistaken (partial credit on that).
Hated USC and UCLA, though totally understood the power that had financially and in the broader chess match.
This one I would just be totally flabbergasted by. Just throwing money town the toilet. Terrible for the Big Ten, terrible for Illinois, terrible for college sports. We already killed the conference system, now we're defiling the corpse.
So much candor you can't stand it and full refunds available on all takes, that's the Gritty Guarantee
Epsilon
M tipping over
- Pdx
Yeah you gotta feel bad for schools like Oregon State and Wazzou though. If UW and UO leave, the Big 12 will likely pick off Az, ASU and Utah. I honestly have no idea if anyone will think the Bay Area schools have value. It’s a big market but I’m not sure what their viewership is. I don’t know if the PAC 12 can even be rescued at this point even if they add San Diego State and SMU.
Joel Goodson
- ties will be resolved
Broadly supported the Nebraska addition at the time (which I regret in retrospect), and completely understood the logic.
Hated the Rutgers and Maryland additions, totally understood the logic, just thought it was badly mistaken (partial credit on that).
Hated USC and UCLA, though totally understood the power that had financially and in the broader chess match.
This one I would just be totally flabbergasted by. Just throwing money town the toilet. Terrible for the Big Ten, terrible for Illinois, terrible for college sports. We already killed the conference system, now we're defiling the corpse.
So much candor you can't stand it and full refunds available on all takes, that's the Gritty Guarantee
My dude, you've been braying about the oncoming demise of the revenue stream (via cord cutting) for over a decade.
Looks like the carriers don't matter nearly as much as you thought.
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ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
Damn right I have. I'm right!
Look at how much is having to be burned to the ground in order to (temporarily!) save the few survivors.
More inflation-adjusted dollars were spent to broadcast the Power Five in 2017 than will be in 2025, and there's no linear broadcaster with the funds and viable schedule real-estate to save the Pac 10.
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Mr. Tibbs
- southeast DuPage
it cant be. the ones left from the PAC9 with no landing spot merge with the SMU, SDSU, Boise st, Fresno , the Nevada's and misc others and keep the name PAC .
But the new PAC is basically the western MAC . its a G5 league
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
An interesting hypothetical is, if cable had the exact same prominence as it did circa 2010-2014 ... would a Cal or a Stanford get an invite before Oregon or Washington? It seems pretty universally accepted by most right now that Oregon and Washington bring more value. However, if we were back in the carrier fee days, would the Bay Area media market for BTN plus superior academics of those two schools outweigh the superior athletics of Oregon and Washington?
Maybe this is obvious and goes without saying, I don’t know. But market incentives led to the creation of this two-conference college major league. Those same market incentives aren’t going to want to stop there. From a revenue maximization standpoint, the college major league would consist of the 20-24 or so programs that are the most marketable—i.e., have the greatest viewership. That’s what future streaming platform partners are going to want from their media rights deals. Clicks equals advertisers and subscription fees.
What is less clear to me is how that happens. I mean, ten years down the road.
One way is that the values of the individual programs in terms of viewership remains fairly consistent with where it is now sbd through a continuous series of realignments and consolidations over a decade the top 20-24 programs eventually gravitate towards each other to form their own exclusive media supercontinent. This won’t involve any B1G or SEC members being “kicked out.” Rather, the elite programs of each will depart their existing conference and group together. In this scenario, we are probably left behind in the remnants of the old B1G.
A second way (which seems less likely to me but theoretically possible) is that membership in the P2 conferences by itself confers so much advantage in terms of revenue and media exposure that all current member programs leave everyone else in the dust. In this scenario, in ten years’s time, a program like Illinois will have so eclipsed non-P2 programs such as, for example Oregon or Clemson even—not because of Illinois inherent metrics but based solely on the massive boost we get from our P2 status—that our viewership strength will have expanded and we will have grown into one of those 20-24 most marketable programs in spite of ourselves.
If what I’m suggesting has any validity at all, then it does not benefit us to invite PAC-12 or ACC schools into the VIP room. It seems like opening the door for them to develop the future partnership that won’t include us. But if I had to guess that probably doesn’t matter. The first scenario seems far more likely and inevitable.
This conference is gonna be massive
IlliniSaluki
- IL metro east burbs of St. Louis
I would just like to point out that the whole deal with OR & WA taking half/partial shares would only be until the next Media Rights deal in 2030 (I think?). This is not unheard of in the B1G. Nebraska was partial share for 6 years before they were whole. Maryland & Rutgers are still partial shares because they took out loans from the B1G when they joined and will be whole at some point in the middle of this new Media deal they are starting this year. The only reason USC & UCLA are full shares from the start is because they joined at the time of a new Media deal being negotiated.
Just wanted to throw the tidbit out their in case anyone might of thought the B1G was doing any kind of permanent partial share thing. They are not.
Just wanted to throw the tidbit out their in case anyone might of thought the B1G was doing any kind of permanent partial share thing. They are not.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
The answer is Washington and one of Stanford/Cal but not both to get two major metros with two schools, right?
Washington and Cal as the West Coast version of Maryland and Rutgers makes sense.
Consider this...yes, you could easily come up with a scenario of an ultra mega conference, of the top 24 teams, completely free of historical conference affiliations. That could be 10 years from now, maybe sooner. But remember, for better or for worse, the big dogs such OSU/Michigan/ ND/Alabama/Georgia/USC/Clemson (measured by both financial strength and on field performance) are the big dogs because they typically go 13-0, 12-1, 10-2, etc, and have huge rivalry games against each other at or near the end of the season. The season "builds" over time, to these championship-esque games, and ultimately the playoff. It's what drives HUGE ratings in November, for example. Networks know this.
If you whittle it down to just the 24 top teams, with some form of structured scheduling, a early December playoff game of 9-3 OSU vs a 10-2 Clemson feels more like the Tennessee Titans vs. the Carolina Panthers.
Soooo, you need the Vandy's, Indiana's, Rutgers' Wake's, Duke's and Northwestern's in the mix, to give juice to the OSU/Mich/USC/ND, etc of this whole thing.
Note, this is NOT to say the bottom half exists just to support the top half, but rather just to point out that you really can't have one without the other.
If you whittle it down to just the 24 top teams, with some form of structured scheduling, a early December playoff game of 9-3 OSU vs a 10-2 Clemson feels more like the Tennessee Titans vs. the Carolina Panthers.
Soooo, you need the Vandy's, Indiana's, Rutgers' Wake's, Duke's and Northwestern's in the mix, to give juice to the OSU/Mich/USC/ND, etc of this whole thing.
Note, this is NOT to say the bottom half exists just to support the top half, but rather just to point out that you really can't have one without the other.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
Yeah, it's a good question. I don't know, but the one thing I do know is that the powers that be at the top of the media industry also do not know.
And this is the problem, it's not. Media corporations lit acres of money on fire trying to push forward streaming services in a low-interest rate environment but did not get the growth they were hoping for and now are frantically trying to cut costs.
The competitor hiding in plain sight to all content that comes through your TV is social media. Tiktok, Twitch, Youtube, Twitter if you're old and dorky like me, these are media products and THEY are growing rapidly. The hours people watch TV isn't growing, the population is growing much more slowly, the low-hanging fruit internationally has been picked, the ad revenue competition gets stiffer by the day, it's very hard times for the media and entertainment business.
In theory that's right. In theory.
Show of hands on a message board dedicated to a team that won't be included: do you have any real interest in watching that? College football has always been my favorite sport so honestly my answer is some interest, but not like before, not even close.
The NFL is the revenue and franchise value king, so in every sport in every country everybody tries to emulate the NFL and looks to the NFL as the model for setting up a sports competition.
Taking the Gritty Redpill is seeing that while the United States is simply culturally addicted to watching pro football on TV, the NFL is in fact a TERRIBLE product across a number of different domains and other competitions trying to emulate it are getting it all wrong. A drug dealer doesn't have to treat their consumer well, but a retail store does.
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
I view this through the lense of “how does this impact us?”
I’m more of an Illini football fan, than I am a college football fan. So I’m not overly concerned with how all of this impacts the sport in general.
That being said, adding more teams does not seem to help us. Am I seeing that right?
Potentially dilutes the amount of money each team generates and increases competition for prime time tv slots, potentially relegating us to Peacock.
What’s best case scenario for the Illini?
I’m more of an Illini football fan, than I am a college football fan. So I’m not overly concerned with how all of this impacts the sport in general.
That being said, adding more teams does not seem to help us. Am I seeing that right?
Potentially dilutes the amount of money each team generates and increases competition for prime time tv slots, potentially relegating us to Peacock.
What’s best case scenario for the Illini?
mattcoldagelli
- The Transfer Portal with Do Not Contact Tag
Is this in reference to Oregon/Washington? Or to the proposed four-pack?
Maybe this is my bias as a Pacific Northwest stan, but I cannot grok the catastrophizing on UO and UW. The logistical benefit of having western counterparts for USC/UCLA alone makes them worth considering.
Why not just Cal Stanford then? Stanford is incredible, and Cal could always improve financially with renewed support for athletics, though it's a huge uphill climb.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
Either.
I mean when you think about median air miles traveled for a conference schedule (and remember, football plays one of the smallest), it surely makes that number higher, right?
They might try to really aggressively pod the non-revenue sports (and should), but they can't for basketball. Rutgers won't play Oregon every year, but before this move it was never. And the quiet part was said loud when USC and UCLA joined: the travel problem falls very disproportionately on them rather than the rest of us.
Joel Goodson
- ties will be resolved
not to mention the satisfaction of knowing that the LA schools crave virtually exclusive access to the Cali cream
Joel Goodson
- ties will be resolved
fans need to get it out of their minds that revenue sports kids are student-athletes. they're junior pros, at least that's what we're morphing towards
- Status