Big 12 exploring whether to have a 13 year grant of tv rights

[Rumrunner]

Oliver Luck of WVU gave an interview regarding WVU's transition to the Big 12.

Two things that stood out:

1. The Big 12 will expand to get WVU a geographic neighbor

"Certainly from our perspective, one would be having a neighbor that is not as far away as our nearest Big 12 opponent right now. Having a more geographic neighbor is important and having the other nine schools in the Big 12 recognize that. "

2. There is discussion about adding 7 additional years to the original six in the grants of right the teams ceded to the conference.

"The discussions on the TV side are going toward the possibility of doing a 13-year granting of rights," Luck said

I could see the Big 12 coming up with something fairly dramatic when expansion hits again.

http://www.wvillustrated.com/story/17294434/luck-discusses-big-12-transition

 

[uconnfan68]

Oliver Luck of WVU gave an interview regarding WVU's transition to the Big 12.

Two things that stood out:

1. The Big 12 will expand to get WVU a geographic neighbor

"Certainly from our perspective, one would be having a neighbor that is not as far away as our nearest Big 12 opponent right now. Having a more geographic neighbor is important and having the other nine schools in the Big 12 recognize that. "

2. There is discussion about adding 7 additional years to the original six in the grants of right the teams ceded to the conference.

"The discussions on the TV side are going toward the possibility of doing a 13-year granting of rights," Luck said

I could see the Big 12 coming up with something fairly dramatic when expansion hits again.

http://www.wvillustrated.com/story/17294434/luck-discusses-big-12-transition

Sounds like they are talking about UL.

 

[Dann]

sounds like they are making sure that these teams wont be going anywhere and that they plan on being 1 of the big 4. hope the acc sees this and figures there out before its to late. acc has to go big or close up shop. which will it be?!?!?!

 

[RS9999X]

The 13 years is to allow them to speak to FSU seriously.
No one in the ACC wants to burn bridges and become Texas Bevo droppings

There's only a couple ACC teams they want. FSU, Clemson or Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, maybe LU from the BE and the never ending BYU or ND commitment.

Most appear uninterested without something that blows away the current ACC negotations for length and amount then they have to do a due diligence. $250 million over 13 years ought to do it.

 

[RS9999X]

And Texas ceding their rights for 13 years after losing Missouri and Texas A&M to get Cincy in the door or Louisville?

Now that's funny.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Louisville is probably the only BE team anywhere on the Big 12 list. VTech and FSU are much more likely the targets.

 

[TRest]

Mr. Luck may find out that nobody in Austins cares that WV is out on an island.

 

[Dann]

The 13 years is to allow them to speak to FSU seriously.
No one in the ACC wants to burn bridges and become Texas Bevo droppings

There's only a couple ACC teams they want. FSU, Clemson or Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, maybe LU from the BE and the never ending BYU or ND commitment.

Most appear uninterested without something that blows away the current ACC negotations for length and amount then they have to do a due diligence. $250 million over 13 years ought to do it.

agree. thats why the acc needs to do something huge(like my 18 grab in a nother thread for example) or they risk the only fball schools down south leaving.

b12 has 10 teams and they will go for 16 or 18.
clemson/gt/miami/fsu/lville/byu could be the pull. don't count out tulane. that conf can afford a project school considering all the other big boys. ncst would never go to the b12 becuase if they needed to move the sec is a easy yes. same with vt.

now we find out what the b10 has been so quiet about for so long....

either the acc or the b12 has to die. 1 of them will get part gutted and will become the big east+cusa mix 5th confrence that has some leftovers but not sdsu's and memphis's...

the b12 has shown that they aren't going to be the dead one, so the acc needs to do something. which happens first? texas finally throws it in and calls the sec, or does the acc finally wake up and create that eastern league and sell psu.

 

[MilliniumPrince]

Geography, strength of athletics, fan following....sounds like VA Tech to me. I still think FSU will be wooed by either the Big 12 or SEC at some point.

 

[whaler11]

I'm feeling pretty ok with counting out Tulane.

 

[FromTheInside]

agree. thats why the acc needs to do something huge(like my 18 grab in a nother thread for example) or they risk the only fball schools down south leaving.

b12 has 10 teams and they will go for 16 or 18.
clemson/gt/miami/fsu/lville/byu could be the pull. don't count out tulane. that conf can afford a project school considering all the other big boys. ncst would never go to the b12 becuase if they needed to move the sec is a easy yes. same with vt.

now we find out what the b10 has been so quiet about for so long....

either the acc or the b12 has to die. 1 of them will get part gutted and will become the big east+cusa mix 5th confrence that has some leftovers but not sdsu's and memphis's...

the b12 has shown that they aren't going to be the dead one, so the acc needs to do something. which happens first? texas finally throws it in and calls the sec, or does the acc finally wake up and create that eastern league and sell psu.

No one's going to 18. The reason being, every team has to bring at least the same value as the average paid out by the conference's TV contracts. And on top of that, the larger the conference, the more difficult it is to add incremental value to a contract........b/c the incremental value is divided over more members. It's the law of diminishing returns.

And, you can go ahead and count out Tulane. No quality conference will ever add them during either of our lifetimes. No TVs, no money, poor athletics, minimal institutional interest in building their athletic programs. At this point, the only teams that any of the big 5 conferences would add are those that add $$$ via on-field performance or $$$ via TVs......and neither of this is Tulane......now or ever.

And, the ACC doesn't have to die if the Big XII decides to stay at 10. Beyond that, there's still a long way to go before ESPN finalizes the reworked ACC contract. The Big XII contract will come out shortly. Until all the numbers are on the table, it's too early to say that any of them have to die. But, the odds are that b/c of the way the ACC's contract is structured, they'll be unlikely to close the gap in TV revenue that exists between them, the SEC, Big Ten, Pac-12, and Big XII.

FWIW, the Big XII contract will end up higher than what was leaked previously.

 

[frankthetank]

No one's going to 18. The reason being, every team has to bring at least the same value as the average paid out by the conference's TV contracts. And on top of that, the larger the conference, the more difficult it is to add incremental value to a contract........b/c the incremental value is divided over more members. It's the law of diminishing returns.

And, you can go ahead and count out Tulane. No quality conference will ever add them during either of our lifetimes. No TVs, no money, poor athletics, minimal institutional interest in building their athletic programs. At this point, the only teams that any of the big 5 conferences would add are those that add $$$ via on-field performance or $$$ via TVs......and neither of this is Tulane......now or ever.

And, the ACC doesn't have to die if the Big XII decides to stay at 10. Beyond that, there's still a long way to go before ESPN finalizes the reworked ACC contract. The Big XII contract will come out shortly. Until all the numbers are on the table, it's too early to say that any of them have to die. But, the odds are that b/c of the way the ACC's contract is structured, they'll be unlikely to close the gap in TV revenue that exists between them, the SEC, Big Ten, Pac-12, and Big XII.

FWIW, the Big XII contract will end up higher than what was leaked previously.

If there's a belief that ESPN has a direct interest in keeping control over major college football (as I'm sure many people here believe), why would they provide ANY incentive for any ACC school to leave for the Big 12? Why would they pay the Big 12 so much (where the rights need to be split up with Fox) and, in turn, not pay the ACC enough of a raise to keep ACC schools from leaving? The ACC is the only power conference that ESPN has complete control over in terms of TV rights from top-to-bottom. If there's one conference that ESPN absolutely does NOT want to see lose any schools, it's the ACC - they're getting a massive amount of quality inventory at a good price.

Here's the upshot to me: ESPN needs to pay the ACC enough to ensure that no one leaves. Maybe it won't be more than the other 4 power leagues, but it will need to close the gap enough to make it not worth it for any other ACC school to bolt. ESPN has a heavy direct interest to protect the ACC here (and I'm not talking about Dickie V bloviating about Duke and UNC in on-air commentary, but rather a true financial interest). That's why I'm much more bullish on the ability of the ACC to withstand raids than many others here (and really most people with Big East ties) - ESPN might be full of itself on-the-air, but it isn't stupid off-the-air.

 

[Carl Spackler]

The ACC made it cost $20 mill to leave in 2011 at the same time as bringing on Cuse and Pitt. They had an existing $16mill exit fee prior to raising to $20 mill - so a $4mill increase isn't a big deal. It's actually significnatly leass than the exit fee increases that the Big East agreed to put in place. (the big east overall fee, obviouslly is lower now at $10 mill, than the ACC exit fee, but big east programs agreed to raise that fee by $5mill, not $4mill)

The ACC leadership was pushing to double it - plus 2 to $34 million. FSU leadership led the charge to get rid of that nonsense. Neinas, the big 12, and WVU just blazed the trail on how to finance a $20million exit fee. If there's a program out there that wants to leave the ACC, and if they get asked, they're out.

ESPN? - if they really were interested in keeping the ACC together? Well, they're already coming up well short of what the projected numbers were supposed to be with the addition of two more programs to the ACC.

See - the thing is.....ESPN has this dangerous line they have to walk, in that they're operating dangerously close to legal problems, in represting and advising the financial interests, and promoting and marketing, the same institutions that they are supposed to be unbiased about in news reporting, and if they push to hard in one direction, marketing and promotion or in the direction of unbiased reporting ......it comes at the cost of hurting the other side.

All that needs to happen, is that another major network makes the effort to market and make it easily available- a 24 hour sports reporting service that is clearly unbiased.....and espn has big trouble. Murdoch is looking into it, if you read the business news. Unlike some other entertainment execs at that level....Murdoch has a pretty decent track record around sports television and entertainment

Interesting times.

 

[frankthetank]

All that needs to happen, is that another major network makes the effort to market and make it easily available- a 24 hour sports reporting service that is clearly unbiased.....and espn has big trouble. Murdoch is looking into it, if you read the business news. Unlike some other entertainment execs at that level....Murdoch has a pretty decent track record around sports television and entertainment

I think Rupert Murdoch has a pretty good track record of building media entities, but if "unbiased" reporting is what anyone is hoping for in an ESPN competitor, then forget about it. Murdoch has built his entire empire INJECTING opinions into news coverage, whether its his newspapers or Fox News. NBC took it in the other direction using the opposite political point of view with MSNBC. Fox and NBC didn't take away CNN's market share by competing with them in terms of building up their news operations around the world. That takes time and money! Nope - they competed with CNN by going low brow and hiring talking heads parroting targeted viewpoints to their respective sides of the aisle. It was cheap and, sadly, effective.

Look at how CBS is choosing to compete with ESPN. They didn't hire away a respected journalist like Bob Ley. Nope - they went after Jim Rome, who has literally promised to bring on more talking head bloggers so that there can be more incendiary debates:

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/colu...9/hiestand-jim-rome-terry-francona/53873192/1

Fox and NBC (and to a lesser extent, CBS) might be financial competitors to ESPN and that could be a very good thing for sports content providers. However, if you think they're going to be unbiased news operations, you're going to be ridiculously disappointed. We may scoff at ESPN's editorial decisions at times, but it took decades and literally hundreds of millions of dollars to build its news operation (just like it took CNN decades and hundreds of millions of dollars to build its news operation). So, do you believe that Fox and NBC are going to try to compete with ESPN on that basis, or are they going to go into the gutter for cheap shock value points just like how they did with their respective news channels? Remember who created the "Best D**m Sports Show" and hired models to file weather reports for its NFL pregame show. I know where I'm placing my bets.

 

[Marty Jackson]

Competition is the best bet. It seems that ESPN has everyone locked up for several years except the BE. Could be a real opportunity for a network to get in the game without spending Pac12 or Big12 $'s.

 

[Carl Spackler]

I think Rupert Murdoch has a pretty good track record of building media entities, but if "unbiased" reporting is what anyone is hoping for in an ESPN competitor, then forget about it. Murdoch has built his entire empire INJECTING opinions into news coverage, whether its his newspapers or Fox News. NBC took it in the other direction using the opposite political point of view with MSNBC. Fox and NBC didn't take away CNN's market share by competing with them in terms of building up their news operations around the world. That takes time and money! Nope - they competed with CNN by going low brow and hiring talking heads parroting targeted viewpoints to their respective sides of the aisle. It was cheap and, sadly, effective.

Look at how CBS is choosing to compete with ESPN. They didn't hire away a respected journalist like Bob Ley. Nope - they went after Jim Rome, who has literally promised to bring on more talking head bloggers so that there can be more incendiary debates:

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/colu...9/hiestand-jim-rome-terry-francona/53873192/1

Fox and NBC (and to a lesser extent, CBS) might be financial competitors to ESPN and that could be a very good thing for sports content providers. However, if you think they're going to be unbiased news operations, you're going to be ridiculously disappointed. We may scoff at ESPN's editorial decisions at times, but it took decades and literally hundreds of millions of dollars to build its news operation (just like it took CNN decades and hundreds of millions of dollars to build its news operation). So, do you believe that Fox and NBC are going to try to compete with ESPN on that basis, or are they going to go into the gutter for cheap shock value points just like how they did with their respective news channels? Remember who created the "Best D**m Sports Show" and hired models to file weather reports for its NFL pregame show. I know where I'm placing my bets.

Was being a little facetious with "unbiased" thing.

Fox news channel?

What fox would do, is make such a parody of sports reporting, that people would begin to take it for what it is - entertainment, not news. Comedy Central. anybody rememer Craig Kilborn? What happened to that guy? What's his name became a national celebrity with the Daily Show platform. The Onion.

What's on the line - is espn's credibility and authority as the go to for the population demographic to get their info.

What funny,is that more people in that all important age group, tune into comedy central for their news from the Daily show, than watch actual network news.......

Anyway - espn needs competition. That company has turned into a monster.

Live television is the most valueable thing that is out there right now, and for the foreseeable future, and live sports, is the biggest piece of that live television world. The rest of the broadcast world is going to wnat to get involved, and the Big East might be the Hyundai leadership on the strip of car dealers that has Beamers, Audi's, Benz, Volvo, Jaguar......but we've got what those other dealers don't have - and that's inventory for sale.

 

[Carl Spackler]

BTW - Neinas is no fool when it comes to college football broadcasting and media relations among college athletics. In the absence of a true post season structure / format to determine a national champion among all 1-A programs,......

The long term granting of individual institution broadcasting rights to a conference entity is the only - ONLY - stabilizing force for a conference in the current intercollegiate athletics landscape. Exit fees, and entry fees,and time constraints are mere nuisances at this point in time.

But the obstacle, is that any institution would be insane to transfer the media revenue rights of their institution to conference leadership in today's environment.

If Neinas can pull that off - is he still in office btw? I think so, if he can pull that houdini act for the big 12 before he steps out....that would be impressive.

 

[TuxedoYoda]

"No one in the ACC wants to burn bridges and become Texas Bevo droppings"

I'm still surprised to see posts like this which imply that 'Texas runs the Big12' or that 'Texas has too much power in the Big12'. Texas never imposed anything unilaterally on the Big12. Every key issue (how the conf shares revenue, the location of the conf HQ and title game, allowing teams to retains their 3rd tier rights and start their own networks) were voted on and approved by all of the conference members.

Now, why did schools like Mizzou and A&M vote for these things and then use them as excuses for leaving? That is God's own private mystery.

 

[RS9999X]

"No one in the ACC wants to burn bridges and become Texas Bevo droppings"

I'm still surprised to see posts like this which imply that 'Texas runs the Big12' or that 'Texas has too much power in the Big12'. Texas never imposed anything unilaterally on the Big12. Every key issue (how the conf shares revenue, the location of the conf HQ and title game, allowing teams to retains their 3rd tier rights and start their own networks) were voted on and approved by all of the conference members.

Now, why did schools like Mizzou and A&M vote for these things and then use them as excuses for leaving? That is God's own private mystery.

The 6 have-nots approved the Texas and Oklahoma two-step shopping a PAC-12 to PAC-16 deal 2 years in a row? Fool me once ....fool me twice two years in a row? 13-year lockup.

 

[TuxedoYoda]

The 6 have-nots approved the Texas and Oklahoma two-step shopping a PAC-12 to PAC-16 deal 2 years in a row? Fool me once ....fool me twice two years in a row? 13-year lockup.

Pac12 aggressively went after Texas, not the other way around. Texas insisted on having its own tier 3 network both times, Pac12 said no dice both times. The 13 year lock-up isn't about Texas. Texas can't take the LHN anywhere else.

OU on the other hand begged for a Pac invite without Texas and was shot-down BUT they would still take it in a heartbeat, and everyone knows it, hence the grant of rights.