Make it make sense

[JSP325]

This is not a rant or a complaint, I'm genuinely curious. And I'm sorry if something similar has been posted before, I don't frequent the Boneyard.

It's common knowledge that Football drives realignment. That gets repeated over and over and over. But I've never heard a good reason as to why. Surely it must be TV Ratings, but that bothers me. Are football ratings really that much better than MBB ratings? I tried finding some apples:apples comparisons of the regular seasons but that's proven to be difficult. Ideally, I wanted to compare UConn MBB ratings vs CFB Ratings of a Arizona/ASU/Utah, but couldn't find all the numbers I wanted.

Here's what I could find for regular season only:
Big East Basketball games on Fox networks averaged 779,000 viewers per game last season.
Overall, MBB (all schools) averaged 371,000 viewers per game during the regular season.

Arizona football averaged 815,000 viewers per game during the season
Week 4 CFB (across all teams) averaged 1.6M viewers per game


So let's just take the worst number from CBB, 371,000 viewers per game. Well each team plays 30-35 games in the regular season. 371,000 x 32 = 11,872,000 viewers for the average MBB team during the regular season.
Do that just for the BE teams and that's 779,000 x 32 = 24,928,000 viewers over the entire season for the average team. UConn would be above that avg but I could not find their specific numbers.

Okay now for football. They play about 12 regular season games
Arizona Football 815,000 viewers per game x 12 games = 9,780,000 viewers per season
Week 4 CFB (all teams) 1,600,000 viewers per game x 12 games = 19,200,000 viewers per season for the average football team

So please, somebody help me understand why Arizona football is worth $30mil, but UConn MBB is worth only $6mil? I could understand the very top tier CFB teams being valued significantly over UConn, because the marque CFB game each week draws 5mil+ viewers, but we're only talking about 10-15 teams that can draw that. But there is just so much content available with MBB, I just can't wrap my head around how the networks are valuing this.

One last thought,
CFB game is 3 hours, CBB game is 2 hours, so there will be more opportunity to generate revenue on commercials per football game. However, even with that factored in:

Arizona Football: 9,780,000 viewers over the season x 3 hours = 29,340,000 viewable hours
1 average Big East MBB team 24,928,000 x 2 hours = 49,856,000 viewable hours

Please help me make sense of this.

 

[SaeHusky]

Great post. I’m not sure what the answer is. Hopefully someone on this board can explain because your math makes sense to me

 

[Waquoit]

Like everything these days, decisions aren't being made on the facts. They are being made by feelings.

 

[cttxus]

Like everything these days, decisions aren't being made on the facts. They are being made by feelings.

. . . culture and relationships.

 

[NH Husky]

This is not a rant or a complaint, I'm genuinely curious. And I'm sorry if something similar has been posted before, I don't frequent the Boneyard.

It's common knowledge that Football drives realignment. That gets repeated over and over and over. But I've never heard a good reason as to why. Surely it must be TV Ratings, but that bothers me. Are football ratings really that much better than MBB ratings? I tried finding some apples:apples comparisons of the regular seasons but that's proven to be difficult. Ideally, I wanted to compare UConn MBB ratings vs CFB Ratings of a Arizona/ASU/Utah, but couldn't find all the numbers I wanted.

Here's what I could find for regular season only:
Big East Basketball games on Fox networks averaged 779,000 viewers per game last season.
Overall, MBB (all schools) averaged 371,000 viewers per game during the regular season.

Arizona football averaged 815,000 viewers per game during the season
Week 4 CFB (across all teams) averaged 1.6M viewers per game


So let's just take the worst number from CBB, 371,000 viewers per game. Well each team plays 30-35 games in the regular season. 371,000 x 32 = 11,872,000 viewers for the average MBB team during the regular season.
Do that just for the BE teams and that's 779,000 x 32 = 24,928,000 viewers over the entire season for the average team. UConn would be above that avg but I could not find their specific numbers.

Okay now for football. They play about 12 regular season games
Arizona Football 815,000 viewers per game x 12 games = 9,780,000 viewers per season
Week 4 CFB (all teams) 1,600,000 viewers per game x 12 games = 19,200,000 viewers per season for the average football team

So please, somebody help me understand why Arizona football is worth $30mil, but UConn MBB is worth only $6mil? I could understand the very top tier CFB teams being valued significantly over UConn, because the marque CFB game each week draws 5mil+ viewers, but we're only talking about 10-15 teams that can draw that. But there is just so much content available with MBB, I just can't wrap my head around how the networks are valuing this.

One last thought,
CFB game is 3 hours, CBB game is 2 hours, so there will be more opportunity to generate revenue on commercials per football game. However, even with that factored in:

Arizona Football: 9,780,000 viewers over the season x 3 hours = 29,340,000 viewable hours
1 average Big East MBB team 24,928,000 x 2 hours = 49,856,000 viewable hours

Please help me make sense of this.

It’s hard to follow your numbers but i think the answer lies somewhere idea that the 371k bb eyes are pretty much the same ones for 32 games and the 1.6m fb eyes are the same ones for 12 games.

One counter could be bb has 20 more opportunities for different sets of advertisers to peddle there goods.

 

[amory]

The Big 12 was a stretch with the geography and culture. We would represent a new direction for the conference, both regionally and athletically.

At the end of the day you need enough votes from the university presidents and you can’t depend on them solely looking at the numbers or the potential. They wanted the four corners and got them, that’s it.