Thanks for the great comments, y'all! Batching and in-lining my responses for efficiency's sake.
The movement away from cable particularly ESPN streaming is going to fragment the market and one wonders what impact if any that will have on college football.
Yes, and this could cut in two directions at once. On the one hand, movement away from Cable eliminates the phenomenon whereby ESPN was subsidized by tens of millions of non-sports fans forced to donate ~$6 per month to it.
On the issue of streaming and fragmenting my experience with WNBA viewing with games broadcast on Prime Video (tonight) is well as twitter, ion, cbssn, and occasionally ABC and CBS is one of irritation and confusion leading the apathy.
On the other hand, fragmentation means that live events that get eyeballs become comparatively more valuable
than ever. So far, college football has been that. If it continues, even if the absolute viewership declines, the relative viewership makes college football telecasts exceedingly valuable for advertisers trying to reach wide cross-sections. So I can see this going in both directions at once.
The streaming experience on Amazon Prime for example is a pale comparison to ESPN or ABC. Insufficient resources are invested by Prime in production and quality announcing.
I agree, but this is why the Pac-1X has such an edge here - they bring production and announcing with them. And I've been genuinely impressed by both the production values and announcing of the Pac-12 Networks. For all the flaws it it, that was the one thing it did well.
The main question at this stage is if the money is there.
I absolutely agree with the bolded, although possibly not as you meant it.
Amazon and Apple didn't get to be trillion-dollar businesses by making bad decisions. Neither of them will put tens or hundreds of millions of dollars into the PAC without seeing a solid business plan. If one of them has really bought (or is buying) a 5- or 10-year deal to broadcast the PAC, it likely means that they have a solid plan to be around well into the future.
That was actually exactly how I meant it! We are of the same mind - I am just not sure the streamers value Pac-12 content highly enough quite yet. All that said, the timing of the writers/actors' strike is helpful to their negotiations, because it's a stark reminder that streamers need ever-refreshing content, and college sports is nothing if not endless hours of new, live content.
If I had to guess, and I could be wrong, my bet is either they'll announce an NBC Sports/Peacock linear/streaming combo or else a combo of ESPN linear and ESPN+ plus either Prime or Apple TV+. Both ESPN and NBC will value that their streaming platforms won't be responsible for production, and Prime and Apple TV+ don't even have that capacity. And Iger is desperate to find ways to get people to sign up for ESPN+.
www.heartlandcollegesports.com
