Streaming College Sports

[billybud]

Club programs seem big in the south.

Strong leagues, true scholar athletes....

Lacrosse, for instance, is a club sport in much of the SEC footprint....The clubs are supported by students/family who cheer on their own....

Kind of Iveyish in a way.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

100%. The 80/20 rule will apply to college sports as well, so we have to make sure we’re one of the top 20% of programs.

Unfortunately, what I fear is inevitable is the elimination of many sports (or reduction to club status at best). Alabama is arguably the most profitable football program and yet the school chooses to offer fewer sports than UConn.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

Except exactly the opposite happened in regular television programming. Over the last 20 years, niche programming has grown dramatically while mainstream programming viewership has declined.

ESPN, and more recently Fox and CBS, told us who we had to watch, and people generally just left the game on. When most viewership becomes streaming, and there is no longer a disparity in access between a main network game vs. an ESPN+ game, the gap will close quite a bit between those two games. I would expect the revenue gap to close some amount too.

 

[hoopsfan22]

I don't think you can compare regular television programming to live sports. There is a virtually unlimited supply on the regular television programming side limited only by funding and imagination/creativity. Live sports on the other hand has a finite inventory.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

I don't think you can compare regular television programming to live sports. There is a virtually unlimited supply on the regular television programming side limited only by funding and imagination/creativity. Live sports on the other hand has a finite inventory.

You couldn't get anyone to watch a soccer match in America 20 years ago, and now it is one of the fastest growing sports on streaming. People's viewing will change when they are given more options. Sports has spent the last 60 years proving that it needs to grow the number of teams to grow the overall market. People are typically loyal to their local team in the pros, and this is doubly true in college.

Now the Big 10 and SEC are trying to contract the number of teams playing at the highest level of college. If the same sized audience was willing to watch Michigan, Ohio State, Alabama, Georgia, Texas and USC play each other over and over, it would have been done already. The only reason a handful of schools were able to grab such a massive share of the total revenues for college sports in the last 20 years is because cable created a weird revenue dynamic and access to broadcasting channels was limited. Those days are over.

 

[Seamus84]

Except exactly the opposite happened in regular television programming. Over the last 20 years, niche programming has grown dramatically while mainstream programming viewership has declined.

ESPN, and more recently Fox and CBS, told us who we had to watch, and people generally just left the game on. When most viewership becomes streaming, and there is no longer a disparity in access between a main network game vs. an ESPN+ game, the gap will close quite a bit between those two games. I would expect the revenue gap to close some amount too.

You couldn't get anyone to watch a soccer match in America 20 years ago, and now it is one of the fastest growing sports on streaming. People's viewing will change when they are given more options. Sports has spent the last 60 years proving that it needs to grow the number of teams to grow the overall market. People are typically loyal to their local team in the pros, and this is doubly true in college.

Now the Big 10 and SEC are trying to contract the number of teams playing at the highest level of college. If the same sized audience was willing to watch Michigan, Ohio State, Alabama, Georgia, Texas and USC play each other over and over, it would have been done already. The only reason a handful of schools were able to grab such a massive share of the total revenues for college sports in the last 20 years is because cable created a weird revenue dynamic and access to broadcasting channels was limited. Those days are over.

Agreed. So what happens to the conference landscape?

 

[hoopsfan22]

You couldn't get anyone to watch a soccer match in America 20 years ago, and now it is one of the fastest growing sports on streaming. People's viewing will change when they are given more options. Sports has spent the last 60 years proving that it needs to grow the number of teams to grow the overall market. People are typically loyal to their local team in the pros, and this is doubly true in college.

Now the Big 10 and SEC are trying to contract the number of teams playing at the highest level of college. If the same sized audience was willing to watch Michigan, Ohio State, Alabama, Georgia, Texas and USC play each other over and over, it would have been done already. The only reason a handful of schools were able to grab such a massive share of the total revenues for college sports in the last 20 years is because cable created a weird revenue dynamic and access to broadcasting channels was limited. Those days are over.

Most people are watching these games because they have some investment in the teams playing, and not because their TV only gets one channel. That audience is captured regardless of platform. I didn't watch UConn-SDSU because it was the only college game on TV that night. The people that don't want to watch this stuff already aren't. Adding more streaming choices in a world where there are already 1000+ cable channels and hundreds of streaming platforms is spitting into the ocean. Every FBS team has had their games on TV for the last 10-15 years, so streaming really isn't going to provide anything that doesn't already exist. No one's going to switch off the Ohio State-Michigan or Bama-Auburn game to go watch the ACC women's field hockey championship showing on AppleTV just because they now have that choice that didn't exist a decade ago. Unless someone invents a new sport that Americans en masse take a liking to that goes up against college football and basketball, there's really not much competition to be had in this space.

 

[ZooCougar]

Except exactly the opposite happened in regular television programming. Over the last 20 years, niche programming has grown dramatically while mainstream programming viewership has declined.

ESPN, and more recently Fox and CBS, told us who we had to watch, and people generally just left the game on. When most viewership becomes streaming, and there is no longer a disparity in access between a main network game vs. an ESPN+ game, the gap will close quite a bit between those two games. I would expect the revenue gap to close some amount too.

I think there is value in niche and broad mainstream.

But you need a very rabid niche.

It’s like Licorice. Not a ton of people like it, the people that do like REALLY like it.

We’re a bit like licorice. I’d rather see UConn with enough of a following to be considered mainstream but I think we have enough of a rabid following in carve out a decent existence even if a P5 offer isn’t on the horizon.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

I believe that a meaningful portion of the NFL's, NBA's, MLB's and NHL's content will be streamed directly by those organizations or their teams within 10 years. If you are ESPN, that is an existential threat (one of several).

 

[hoopsfan22]

I believe that a meaningful portion of the NFL's, NBA's, MLB's and NHL's content will be streamed directly by those organizations or their teams within 10 years. If you are ESPN, that is an existential threat (one of several).

They already do that. MLB for example has its MLB.tv service. You can watch all 2,430 regular season games there with few exceptions. Been watching the Red Sox this way for years where NESN is not allowed on cable within 25 miles of Yankee Stadium or whatever the silly rule is. The networks like Fox and ESPN broadcast very few games anymore.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

They already do that. MLB for example has its MLB.tv service. You can watch all 2,430 regular season games there with few exceptions. Been watching the Red Sox this way for years where NESN is not allowed on cable within 25 miles of Yankee Stadium or whatever the silly rule is. The networks like Fox and ESPN broadcast very few games anymore.

TNT/TBS and ESPN still carry a lot of NBA games, but I watched most of my NBA games through the NBA League Pass which I purchased directly from NBA.com.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Iger does not exactly give ESPN a ringing endorsement, and he says ABC is for sale.

 

[Exit 4]

 

[huskymedic]

-> Iger told CNBC that he already has had talks with companies about becoming strategic partners in the network — companies that could help ESPN with content, distribution or capital. “If they come to the table with value that enables ESPN to make a transition to its direct-to-consumer offering, then we’re going to be very open minded about that,” he said. <-

-> The most popular answer centered on private equity investors like KKR, Apollo or Candle Media, the Blackstone-backed media company run by former Disney executives Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs.

By going the private equity route, Iger would have cover to manage the business more aggressively and move more quickly into sports gaming and streaming.

This would let Iger take ESPN’s financials — which are likely to be hampered by the continued shrinking of the cable bundle — off Disney’s balance sheet, while also allowing him to keep his hand in the sports business.

Iger could find this move attractive because private equity does not represent a long-term play. Five years from now, when ESPN has diversified its business and is growing through streaming and gaming, Disney could buy back that stake.

Essentially, a private equity move could amount to a five-year loan — albeit at a high price. <-

 

[ScottVib]

The freedom to do things like grab dollars from direct link out to sports gaming, grabbing a loyal contingent of fans (say WWE) and driving them into the ESPN+ subscription stream (where WWE's new partner UFC already lives) by adding one or more of their tv properties, without the "damage" to the Disney brand that some might claim, then you buy it back as an existing relationship.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

The final nail in the cable coffin will be when the combination of improved wireless networks and video compression makes it possible to better stream video in the home by wireless.

Anyone whose argument about realignment is predicated on the survival of cable has no idea what they are talking about.

 

[B1GEast]

Entertainment has been decentralized. It used to be that if you had content, you needed to find a distributor and negotiate that media deal.

The big seismic event in sports happened in 1996 when Fox Sports purchased all of the regional networks to distribute NFL games to non NFL markets. Until then, ESPN had national rights, but now Fox ended up with local regional rights, even though ESPN paid billions of dollars for the NFL contract, Fox could still sell access to the local games in their markets.

This is when the other networks started to launch their own sports branded networks. Broadband was only a few years old at the time.

It took ESPN 2 eight years to grow to 50 million subscribers, Fox achieved that milestone in 18 months through acquisition.

Distributors were at the mercy of ESPN, who averaged $2 dollars per subscriber on cable, versus a channel like CNN, which charged.50 cents per subscriber for it's services to Comcast or Cox cable, but in order to get ESPN, you had to also carry ESPN 2 at $1.25 per subscriber.

You have to understand the economics and evolution of sports programming to understand where we are today.

It's not easy to create your own sports network and do well at a high quality. It's expensive and technically challenging.

Everybody is joining into this market, Amazon, Apple, and your cousin is getting into trying to obtain more content to distribute it via phones, streaming, cable, you name it. And if your product is big enough, even international outlets will pay.

Yormark understands media deals and how to maximize all of the available options they have.

It's going to be very interesting to see how this all unfolds when the PAC 12 media deal is finalized if it ever is.

 

[champs99and04]

Yormark understands media deals and how to maximize all of the available options they have.

I understand everything you're saying here except this part. Why does the evolving media landscape make UConn more attractive to the Big 12? I would think the opposite, if anything.

 

[B1GEast]

I understand everything you're saying here except this part. Why does the evolving media landscape make UConn more attractive to the Big 12? I would think the opposite, if anything.

Because he knows that for the Big 12, access to the New York market by adding UConn will give him leverage. Not only in NY, but also in New England. UConn is very popular all across New England.

Yormark also understands the the current NCAA media deal with CBS is incredibly undervalued. That next contract will be huge and will most likely be spread out to different companies. I don't think it will be exclusively CBS, they'll probably get more high profile games.

UConn makes all the sense in the world if your goal is to go after untapped media markets. They already established in the geographic footprint they're already in.

Adding both BC and Syracuse never expanded regional interest for the ACC. When Maryland left, nobody in New England or Metro NY really cared about the ACC.

 

[B1GEast]

I understand everything you're saying here except this part. Why does the evolving media landscape make UConn more attractive to the Big 12? I would think the opposite, if anything.

Imagine Kansas traveling to Storrs in December for a Big 12 conference game. That would move the needle and that's why UConn matters to the Big 12.

It's not a football draw yet, but Yormark believes that with time, the football program will continue to improve.

 

[Drew]

I think this is interesting - no major properties up for renewal means relative.. stability?

 

[nelsonmuntz]

I think this is interesting - no major properties up for renewal means relative.. stability?

Looks like the "sky is falling" reports for the Big East and Pac 12 may be a bit premature.

 

[Exit 4]

Looks like the "sky is falling" reports for the Big East and Pac 12 may be a bit premature.

Yes as clearly evidenced by the awesome contract the P12 has landed for renewal.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Yes as clearly evidenced by the awesome contract the P12 has landed for renewal.

So you want colleges to make less money for their broadcast rights?

 

[Exit 4]

So you want colleges to make less money for their broadcast rights?

Your retort does not compute. Try again.

 

[Exit 4]

The market must be too strong. Yes, that's what it is.