Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
I think the Challenge might be like the Braggin’ Rights with the home team having TV rights? Maybe?
New Big Ten Media Rights Deal
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ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
Well it's sort of a moot point since both conferences were major partners with ESPN as the sole broadcaster and promoter of the event.
That's been severed now.
There's no reason it can't continue in theory with ESPN and Fox each showing half the games, but I would be surprised if it does. The Big Ten is dead to ESPN as of today. I think that's going to prove to be more expansive and openly petty than some are expecting.
I'm betting there will be an ACC/SEC Challenge on ESPN, and then a B1G/Pac 12 or Big 12 Challenge depending on how Fox allocates its remaining ammo with whatever happens out there. Also the Gavitt Games will probably expand to include the whole conference.
The Braggin' Rights isn't a network-driven event in the same way, I'm sure we'll keep that going, I hope that's not imperiled. Even if Fox and the league office (which are one entity now) don't want us to do it, they can't stop us and we should tell them to take a hike.
Ransom Stoddard
Ordained Dudeist Priest
- Bloomington, IL
Cable/satellite is dying. It's just a fact, so along with that fact come changes in what people need to subscribe to in order to receive their preferred content. For years I've heard people gripe about having to pay for 247 channels that they don't watch on basic cable, and that's transforming into people griping about having to subscribe to a streaming service where they are only interested in a small fraction of that service's content. The middle ground would be that everything is PPV on streaming, which would undoubtedly cost the average consumer much, much more and would result in a lot less niche content because the revenue doesn't spread the same way.
Embrace the streaming, it's going to be all we have in a matter of years.
Embrace the streaming, it's going to be all we have in a matter of years.
First rd of BTT on Peacock instead of BTN is interesting. What will BTN even air?
I love the all day football matchups though especially the prime time
I love the all day football matchups though especially the prime time
With all this extra $ our athletic department will be able to pay off our debt by 2075.
Serious question for those that may know, how is that athletic dept. handled? I know it is owed (much to the university system), but will the athletic department really need to pay it back, or could it get absorbed into the system (I think Rutgers did this)?
Our athletic department debt is massive, and I'm just curious how that debt will impact will be on future investment/spending of media $ increases (i.e. will we ever fix the horseshoe, or be able to make other investments to keep up with the big dogs). Or, will we be stuck taking the new media $ and throwing it toward paying down the actual debt, instead of just servicing it.
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sacraig
- The desert
Somehow I absolutely cannot foresee the Pac-12 playing nice with the B1G in the foreseeable future. For all we know the Pac-12 may not even exist in its current form by 2023.
Yeah I remember when there was all this talk about forcing cable companies to provide a la carte service and it always seemed to me to be a recipe for paying equal or more, for less. I think that is unfortunately what streaming is going to become. Instead of paying a bunch of money to watch (or not watch) Fox, NBC, ESPN, TMC, Food Network etc, in the future you'll pretty much subscribe to each network or bundle of networks that probably interests you individually. I hate cable but I easily see this ending up even worse, where after you get everything you and all your family members with diverging interests wants the household entertainment bill (with highspeed internet to run it) balloons beyond what a cable package was costing.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
Maybe not, but if they stay together due to Fox's largesse, we will both do whatever the hand that feeds us wants us to do.
A Pac 12 with two more Pacific time zone schools added playing their top games in the late windows on ESPN and ESPN2 seems like the most likely marriage at this point.
The Big 12 would then be left picking up the scraps with Fox, and maybe joining us on Peacock. Tough spot to be in.
IlliniSaluki
- IL metro east burbs of St. Louis
I think that pertains to streaming the NBC Sports Network that is going away or has it already gone away? But for streaming actual games not on NBCSN you'd need to subscribe to Peacock for $4.99/month.
As to games on Peacock I see no issue. I already have it for other sports and WWE. We have had no issue with any streaming through it. *shrug*
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The studio shows and OnDemand content is free. Live sports i.e. the games you want to watch cost $4.99/month.
If only we had an example of this happening before. Something like, oh I don't know, Uber all but putting cabs/taxis out of business and then jacking up their prices. It's a shame but it already happening. And like Uber, streaming is a better service but will soon have a monopoly and will be able to charge whatever they want.
Shief
- Champaign Area
Pike, I was a member of the Fighting Illini Fan Council, the group that the DIA set up for general supporters to give their thoughts on things, for four years and they showed us the highlights of the athletic department budget each year. I do not remember the specifics now, as the budget info was usually shared during the Fall meeting, but a good chunk of the budget from previous years was allocated/spent to pay back the bonds for the different building projects. If ~$20 million of Illinois' share of the additional ~$40 million new media rights money goes to pay off the various projects for a few years, with no new projects being started or no major donor gifts, it would greatly help pay down the debt but I have a strong feeling that there would still be some debt remaining by 2030, when media rights are renegotiated again.
I‘m wagering the opposite take. I don’t see the value. I’ve previously posted the home games ND is scheduling. With the B1G getting the NBC prime time slot that leaves “Notre Dame on NBC” competing with the B1G Noon game on Fox or the B1G CBS game at 3:30, not to mention the best ACC, and SEC games on ESPN.
ND viewership is already faltering and at lowest ever levels. ND schedule is not going to pull viewers away from the 4 or 5 better games being played. People don’t watch 6 CFB games on Saturday. They’ll watch their home team and then maybe 1 or 2 more.
The best thing for NBC is to use ND as a bargaining chip to join the B1G for a 2nd time-slot opposite CBS, or the Fox game.
BZuppke
- Plainfield
Throwing something out here - if college football is going down the NFL route in many ways is it wrong to think the powers that be are going to have to address the disparity between the blue bloods and everyone else? Long ago the 85 scholarship limit was instituted to help do so. Everyone knows having the same teams in the playoff every year is not healthy for the sport. If I were a reporter I’d be asking Warren that question.
Joel Goodson
- respect my decision™
UT and ND would really get the escalators rolling. Not to mention SEC/ESPN heads exploding.
I think the idea that lack of parity hurts ratings is overstated, if not outright untrue. The EPL is experiencing unprecedented success despite the fact Man City has won 4 if the last 5 titles and only 5 teams have finished in the top 3 in that same span. In the US dynasties led by superstars have proven to draw attention and eyeballs (Bulls in the 90s, Patriots more recently).
I think college football's problem hasn't necessarily been the same teams over and over. It's been the same teams AND uncompetitive blowouts. The playoff product has been bad. It's more a question of disparity between the top 1% and the next 10% than the disparity between the top 1% and the remaining 99%.
I think NIL may already be helping that issue, but if you expect it to level the playing field in a more expansive way you'll probably be disappointed.
Mr. Tibbs
- southeast DuPage
BZuppke
- Plainfield
Well I for one couldn’t care less who wins among Georgia, Alabama, Clemson and Ohio state. Wouldn’t things be better if others teams and their fans actually had a chance?
Expanded playoffs will help with that but realistically, unless you follow a similar player acquisition and compensation structure, you're never going to see a scenario like in draft based pro leagues with salary caps where any team can turn into a contender in a five year time frame and where top teams eventually decline and have to rebuild. And that's also not a requirement to keep fans interested. There are always going to be fans that don't care for the tes that happen to be good but I think playoff ratings seem to indicate more people on the aggregate watch the bigger name teams, bjt above all compelling competitive games are the most important thing.
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
I think the difference is you have A LOT more fans of “not elite” teams in college sports … even ONLY looking at alumni, you just have some massive fan bases for “out of the club” schools like UCLA, Wisconsin, MSU and - yes - Illinois. That’s a lot of unhappy people if the playing field is THAT uneven.
I feel the big dogs need the middle tier teams in college sports more than pro sports need theirs. Could change, but the fact that a huge chunk of each school’s fan base literally attended the school for college, they’re not going to just dip out like many pro sports fans would. I don’t know though, all speculative.
Not sure why there's such complaining on here about games being on Peacock. Would it be really that much worse than the basketball games on BTN+ that hardly anyone is able to watch?
I've had Peacock for just over a year but that was mainly due to WWE Network moving over there. I've never really had major issues watching online or through the app. I have Xfinity so I can just watch it through my TV now as well. There will be plenty of stuff that you all can watch on there aside from just Illini sports.
The one drawback I do know is that if you can't watch the event live from the start, you can't start it over from the beginning. You have to wait until after the event ends before you can go back and watch it in full.
I've had Peacock for just over a year but that was mainly due to WWE Network moving over there. I've never really had major issues watching online or through the app. I have Xfinity so I can just watch it through my TV now as well. There will be plenty of stuff that you all can watch on there aside from just Illini sports.
The one drawback I do know is that if you can't watch the event live from the start, you can't start it over from the beginning. You have to wait until after the event ends before you can go back and watch it in full.
I think you're overestimating the share of the fanbase that's made up of alumni.
Which colleges have the most non-alum fans?
There's no perfect way to calculate this, but these numbers are still pretty interesting. Full power-conference rankings within!
www.sbnation.com
You're probably also overestimating percentage of viewers of the bigger events like championship and playoff games that are fans of either team, or even really sports fans.
And these casuals, sometimes fans, and unaffiliated sports fans are (unfortunately) more important to networks' calculations because unlike us hardcore fans they can be won and lost far more easily.
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