As you guys are aware, I have always maintained that people watch marquis match ups. Brands.
The SEC has cornered major brands...Texas-LSU and Oklahoma-Alabama is of more interest than Indiana-Wisconsin or Wake Forest-Georgia Tech. ESPN has been evolving and the handwriting was on the wall when CBS had been paying the SEC $55 million per year for the one SEC Game of the Week.....and ESPN upped that to $300 million...
That one SEC game costs them almost what the whole year of ACC games does.
ESPN will have what amounts to NFL Saturdays. Big time programs with the best athletes that money can influence.
And...where things get murky..is that ESPN owns the SEC brand and is also the largest sports media outlet.
They will, as they have been doing, shill the SEC since they own it...their talking heads will play it up even during other games, the SEC games will dominate available band width in the prime hours of watching...all influencing public perception, rankings, etc...
And soon we will see lesser brands, like the ACC, relegated to the ACCN, ESPN+, etc.
The joke about E SEC PN will have become reality.
Fox will try to counter with their brands....it could be a binary world, kind of like Fox News is now to one set of viewers and CNN to the other set.
But no matter what, with streaming, we will be able to watch most of the teams of our choosing..
..and like in the story we read our kids..Horton Hears a Who....
“Don't give up! I believe in you all. A person's a person, no matter how small! And you very small persons will not have to die. If you make yourselves heard! So come on, now, and TRY!”