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Hurtlocker

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Everything posted by Hurtlocker

  1. Could The Mountain West Become A Power 5 Conference?
  2. But....why? They already own the south with Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, LSU, Alabama, Texas and Oklahoma. Neither FSU nor Clemson are bigger draws than any of them. If FSU/Clemson are 25-30% of the ACC's value, then keeping that status quo means ESPN is overpaying the ACC for 13 years to the tune of $1.2-1.5 billion. Additionally, they now need to double the payments of FSU/Clemson in the SEC, which means shelling out an additional $780m. Even without factoring in buyouts, or inflation growth, or GoR negotiations, for ESPN to keep things status quo for 12 and double for 2, would cost them $2-2.5 billion over 13 years. To outlay this kind of cash FSU/Clemson would need to have all of their games be T1 only games (they can't) averaging around 9-12m in audience every game (they won't). There is so much working against ESPN on this, at a time where they are slicing budgets and are looking to put more money into the UFC/NBA/NFL, that I just cannot fathom a way for them to fund this. The only way this kind of works is if you do it the same way it happened with the Pac. Instead of paying the Pac $300m for ten properties, ESPN spent $80m for four.
  3. Er, wait....what? They're in the process of being cobbled together with Discovery Networks from the AT&T split, they've shut down production on numerous movies and shows, and lost a ton of subscribers in cable and in rebranding to Max. No one is sitting on a pile waiting to be spent, they're struggling to make money on what they've already invested.
  4. It's not damages, that's the catch. The ACC literally owns the rights. If FSU wants them before 2036, they need to buy them back. The question is, what is that worth? It's hard for FSU to argue that they only need to pay $300m on one side and that they're worth $750m on another.
  5. Its really a question of how much Fox wants to fuck with ESPN. Any move from the ACC to B1G is full on stolen property. It almost makes more sense for the B1G to go UVA/UNC/Duke/FSU because they take the biggest football brand and all the basketball cache that ESPN has built their network on. The ACC media contract for weekly basketball games is basically who is playing UNC or Duke and for football its whoever is playing ND or FSU. How much is neutering your rival's last non-SEC value worth? And what if the mouse doesn't care? If the SEC doesn't care? Let the ACC go, dump the money into the NBA and just feature SEC/B12 football and basketball.
  6. Everyone except ND is a net negative for the B1G, even FSU/Clemson, though FSU would be the closest #2.
  7. The thing that gets me with this story is the State of Iowa looked and the data came from the betting sites. There is no way in any statistical model I can think of, that this is isolated to Iowa, a state that barely moves the gambling meter on any given day. There are like 35 states that have legal online betting. Maybe a poor choice of words, but I'd wager there are a metric shit ton of big programs out there that are praying that their states don't also decide to look at who is betting, and how, now that the road map to find them is laid out publicly. Another thing I've found funny about this, outside the stupid parents, assuming they knew and the kids just didn't use their info, is how small the bets were. We're talking about paying kids 5, 6, 7 digits in NIL, and most of these bets were for $10 or less.
  8. So...? SEC: FSU, Clemson? B1G: UVA, UNC, Miami? Hold for ND or swipe Duke? B12: VTech, NCState, Pitt, Louisville? Left out: Cuse, BC, Wake, Tech? The biggest issue I see here is ESPN is THE player in all of these moves besides the B1G, and they've invested a ton in the ACC Network. Its equally plausible FSU/Clemson leave and the remaining 12 stay together, add UConn, and live comfortably on the buyouts, which should be significant if you can't get 12 teams to vote for dissolution. Let's pretend its only a quarter bill each, that's $500m in the ACC's coffers, which is equal to an entire year of revenue. They could buy Cal's debt and make another $600m on the servicing over the next century. Agree though that FSU/Clemson not having a home in advance that is bought and paid for is dumb. Especially when someone else currently owns your rights.
  9. The other autonomous conferences. I can't see where we'll have 5 going forward.
  10. Yeah the only problem is they didn't start doing this last year. Every MWC school now has a $34m buyout to get out by next year, instead of $17m. The AAC has around $20m. They'll all have some negotiated down, but still, the only teams west of the Mississippi who can move for free are the Pac 4.
  11. The pandemic crushed all budgets, even those who figured out how to play. The B1G had to sell a majority stake in their rights to Fox to make up some quick cash and then Fox went goblin mode.
  12. not to keep drummer talk from going away, but I'd agree. He also wrote a bunch of their songs and used some complicated time sigs and transitions.
  13. Can the Cal Golden Bears Survive A Season Without Football? “Perhaps the pandemic will finally give Berkeley a way to get out of having a football team,” said one member of the 2016 task force.
  14. It's because it's the front porch for most school's marketing to the greater world. It's worth losing money on sports if you gain it back in admissions, much like a marketing budget. That being said, some are far worse than others. In the Power Five, 77% of the schools operated in the black as of the 2021-22 fiscal. Of those that didn't, half were in the Pac 12: Arizona, Colorado, Tennessee, South Carolina, Arizona State, Oregon State, Washington, Viriginia Tech, Ole Miss, Maryland, UCLA and Rutgers.
  15. ESPN should just give them the BYU deal of like $10-15m a year to go indy, then have the B12 schedule them OOC. That way they have all the games and don't have to pay. Either that, or add them and start a new conference network off the old PacNet infrastructure to pay for the adds. Edit: I went to look and the old B12 had 7.9m dma households, which is not enough for a conference network, nor did they have the inventory to fill one. The current B16 swells that number to 18m homes, which definitely supports a conference network and, at sixteen, provides the inventory to fill it up. Adding Stanford/Cal bumps that up to 20.5m homes. That's enough to generate $250-400m in yearly revenue off back end rights.
  16. This is another one of the Pac's numerous failings. In the 2010s, when Texas stayed in the first realignment, the "have nots" of the conference invested the media revenue wisely in sports infrastructure and in methods to increase fan engagement and revenue. While they won't catch Texas, they transformed the conference. Iowa State brought in around $45m back then, they've more than doubled that in a decade to $112m. Kansas State doubled theirs in that time and most others jumped from the $60s into the $100ms. Matter a fact, all of the Irate 8 have increased their AD budgets over $100m, which is sort of the line in the sand for the top 50 schools. Granted, they all need to bump that up into the $150s in the next 5 years, but their books are healthy. This is not the case with the Pac. Their haves continued to have, but the have nots didn't keep up in the same fashion. Most all of the schools use an unhealthy amount of school funds to subsidize the athletic departments and they've been the most financially weak of the P5 conferences for a while, but the OSU/WSU are special. Oregon State and Iowa State, who had the smallest AD budget in the Big 12 a decade ago, were pretty similar in 2013, today Iowa State brings in $23m more per year. And it does that without taking any school funds (outside charging the students ticket fees in tuition). Oregon State got to its number with $8.5m in school funds, meaning the clones make $30+m more per year than the Beavers with a similar media deal. Washington State is even worse and, to your point, they are the lowest revenue generator in the Power Five. It takes $14m in school funds, meaning its true revenue is only $69m - and 65% of that is rights and licensing! For comparison, Central Florida made $89m in that same year, but without a power five media deal. Oregon State and Washington State, regardless of history or success, just don't operate like a power five athletic department and are far closer to Air Force, SDSU, and UNLV.
  17. Definitely, but on top of those two things the B12, MWC, ACC, and AAC have buyouts that run far longer than any media deal. The B12's is a 99 year agreement. It costs $100m to leave the B12, $120m to leave the ACC, and $17-$34m to leave the MWC and AAC. The Pac had none. So its cheaper for Stanford to move to another conference and way more expensive to backfill the Pac. That's why the Pac brand will disappear fully. If they had a buyout, I doubt anyone would have left after USC/UCLA. They could have added SDSU/SMU and made less, but the math to jump to the B1G at reduced rates or Colorado/AZ to the B12 would have been far less friendly.
  18. The Pac fucked themselves royally. They have no buyouts and all the other conferences around them do. Its like they learned nothing from the Big East, ACC and Big 12 over the past 20 years, while the MWC and AAC did.
  19. They could do that with UConn though. Only thing I can think this may give them is more premium subs for ACCN. But even then its not a huge amount. Maybe $50-60m more out of DFW and the Bay Area. If ESPN is giving them full in, maybe that's enough to bribe FSU and Clemson. If ESPN is using this bump to pay for them though, its a wash.
  20. It will get there eventually. Not just because the other sports suffer, but also because once you do this the media contracts get stupid big. It sounds strange to say, but conferences are the biggest limiter on rights fees at the moment.
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