Aresco Sounds Off

[clmssun]

Bingo. There's the blame. Walk from the NBC offer. Never should have been accepted. The match rights are only relevant if you give ESPN something so easy to match.

Maybe I view the world too cautiously or too pessimistically, but I would be concerned that a rejection of NBC's offer could have led to a *lower* offer from ESPN.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Maybe I view the world too cautiously or too pessimistically, but I would be concerned that a rejection of NBC's offer could have led to a *lower* offer from ESPN.

It might. Who cares? The Problem with the contract for UConn is that it's a blended average of teams that probably could have gotten $5, 6, 7M selling their rights themselves, and those who would get maybe $300K. UConn has the most valuable rights in the conference by miles, and so we are the largest donor to the welfare of others in the league. Carl is right, that the exposure is better than we'd get on our own, but the money is much worse.

I think the contract with NBC did not do enough to reserve to the schools, the chance to sell certain rights independently. The other problem was timing...post ACC GOR, the AAC would have gotten more, since the league would appear to be more stable.

 

[CL82]

Every ROFR I have ever seen serves primarily to scare people off. Why spend time and money to bid on something you have no chance of winning? In the rare times where a bidder is not scared off, they have to bid way too high because for some reason they need whatever was protected by the ROFR and want to chase off the holder of the ROFR. 9 times out of 10 a ROFR results in a throwaway low ball bid, because the bidder, in this case NBC, figures that the only way they will get the property is if ESPN doesn't want it, in which case NBC is the only bidder. So they act like they are the only bidder and submit a lowball, which is exactly what NBC did.

Depends on the value of the property (size of the pot) and the relative econmic strength of the player (availability of chips to play.) In this case the size of the pot wasn't worth going all in to NBC and the ESPN likely had enough chips to cover regardless.

 

[noeynox]

It might. Who cares? The Problem with the contract for UConn is that it's a blended average of teams that probably could have gotten $5, 6, 7M selling their rights themselves, and those who would get maybe $300K. UConn has the most valuable rights in the conference by miles, and so we are the largest donor to the welfare of others in the league. Carl is right, that the exposure is better than we'd get on our own, but the money is much worse.

I think the contract with NBC did not do enough to reserve to the schools, the chance to sell certain rights independently. The other problem was timing...post ACC GOR, the AAC would have gotten more, since the league would appear to be more stable.

Conference welfare is the way it works in all the conferences. Anyone think, Michigan's TV rights and Purdue's are worth the same? North Carolina and Wake Forest? How about UConn and Ohio State? You'd have no problem if UConn one day got an equal pay day to Ohio State's but you have a problem with Tulane getting an equal share today with UConn.

While I do believe UConn's rights are probably worth the most, UConn simply had to compromise a little to you know, have a conference to play sports in. Terry Holland of ECU proposed a plan where the individual schools sold their rights, my guess is it wasn't adopted because there is no incentive financial or otherwise for the schools making less to play sports with us. There has to be something in it for everyone for them to want to come together and form a conference. What is in it for us is simply having a collection of schools to play against in a "conference". For some schools in this league, the money probably tripled.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Conference welfare is the way it works in all the conferences. Anyone think, Michigan's TV rights and Purdue's are worth the same? North Carolina and Wake Forest? How about UConn and Ohio State? You'd have no problem if UConn one day got an equal pay day to Ohio State's but you have a problem with Tulane getting an equal share today with UConn.

While I do believe UConn's rights are probably worth the most, UConn simply had to compromise a little to you know, have a conference to play sports in. Terry Holland of ECU proposed a plan where the individual schools sold their rights, my guess is it wasn't adopted because there is no incentive financial or otherwise for the schools making less to play sports with us. There has to be something in it for everyone for them to want to come together and form a conference. What is in it for us is simply having a collection of schools to play against in a "conference". For some schools in this league, the money probably tripled.

Not disagreeing at all. Just saying why this is a bad deal for UConn, and that preserving some additional rights to be marketed separately would have leveled it out some. Especially around women's basketball.