As the details of the AAC contract comes out, interesting view of exposure.
When this issue was debated, for football, it was assumed ESPN and CBS national networks did not include the barren outpost of CBS Sports Network. Wonder what other gems are in the AAC contract.
Aresco:
I don't think people have focused enough on how good the exposure is that they're giving us in football and basketball. For instance in basketball, I think it's 113 games of the 170 games in 2014 will be on national ESPN platforms or a few of them sub-licensed to national platforms.
Aresco:
Many already have outstanding facilities whether it's the level of TV exposure ESPN will televise 58 of our 66 football games nationally on either ABC again or ESPN national platforms in 2014, with a handful sublicensed to other national networks
Wonder what few means...now that we know that a handful means at least 20%? (Wonder if al jazeera wants some sports?)
Greg Auman @gregauman
To clarify, CBS Sports Network gets 13-15 football games a year that would have been in ESPN/ESPN2 pool -- out of 70 or so in American deal.
The CBS Network deal stands on its own though. That's 12 games.
Breaking it down, we have this:
Basketball:
170 games total
113-25 to ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU: 88
25 to CBS Sports Network: 25
6 to CBS Network: 6
6 OOC to CBS Network
So, that accounts for 119 of the 170 games.
Now, Fox1 or 2 can also sublicense basketball games with ESPN, but in that case, a move to FS1 would probably give you more exposure than say ESPNU. And, it's likely that ESPN would not give Fox any decent games, so that wouldn't be a bad deal for the conference.
Nonetheless, 25 and 30 is WAY too much for CBS SN.
The only caveat to this is that 113 of 170 is a higher % of games than ESPN showed of the BE. Now that ESPN is don to 88 games, we're probably below the BE %. I didn't expect more. But, I thought we were trading dollars for exposure.
Something makes me suspect that Aresco made sweetheart deals with CBS and that's why the $$$ from ESPN is so bad. I mean, did ESPN sign off on 5 Louisville games to CBS SN? I doubt it. Is ESPN paying so little because some top games are migrating?