That’s a good read. I would love to see a lot of our baseball games on ESPN+. I haven’t subscribed to it yet but I would. If ESPN+ is a necessary evil to get us to at least 10M I’m in. Less than that I would risk the open market. I just hope we have as many tier 1 and 2 games as now. As alluded to in the article, ESPN+ isn’t much worse than CBSSN.
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Of course ESPN would be happy to rook us to this if there is no clause limiting their power to increase rates. They introduced ESPN+ at 4.99 per month. After these deals are in place what is to stop them from bumping it to 7.99 or 9.99? If Sunbelt plus AAC are relegated to this, that’s 5 million alumni having to pay double to watch tier 3. As a business owner that’s what i would do. We need a preventative plan in place to cap rates for our fans, if in fact it comes down to using ESPN+ rather than CBSports.
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ESPN+ is the wave of the future and we need to embrace it. I remember when the SWC in the early 80’s didn’t embrace ESPN and went with Raycom. It was thought at the time that most of the fans don’t have cable and the whole idea of a 24 hour sports channel is kind of silly anyways. We didn’t embrace it and the Big East did. The SWC died and the Big East flourished.
If the American embraces it and helps ESPN+ build it (and gets paid to do it), the American could be the 2020’s version of the 1980’s Big East. The American’s football content is good and getting better. The American’s basketball content is very good and getting better. With an infusion of ESPN money, the content could be excellent across the board.
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ESPN holds all the cards and I don’t expect them to throw money around.
They don’t hold all of the cards and they wouldn’t be throwing money around by investing in the American. The American has proven to be a good investment.
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Well here’s the thing, just how close are we? The week has come and gone. I remember Dave Maggard saying we are “this close” to building the Robertson End Zone facility.
You think the AAC is a good conference that has value. I disagree. There is a reason the AAC is considered a G5 conference. It is crap.
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2020 $5 mil
2021-2023 $8.5 mil
This says conference distributions… doesnt say new media deal… so take it for what its worth
so they doubled us to finish our current contract…then 7mil for 3 years (in average, it escalates)…
not that bad…the naysaysers were saying 3 to 4…the super optimist were saying 10 and up…landed right in the middle
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ESPN holds all the cards and I don’t expect them to throw money around unless your name is UT.
I fixed it for you.
You mean give money to UT who doesn’t deserve it. ESPN is losing money on the LHN deal but UT still gets $15M per year.
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EXACTLY!!
So if I am understanding this right, Memphis is getting $3.3m now, which means that since our TV deal is worth something like $1.9m they get about $1.4m in other money. So if next year the projection is $8.5m, minus $1.4m, the TV deal is worth about $7m. Right in the middle of the $6-8m projection
I actually recall the naysayers predicting $6 million per school, not $3-4. I may be wrong but $6 is the low number I recall. Which may end up being the case.
Time to go Baylor boy
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$4-6M is what I remember.
So… we hit par? This is good? Is this why the Memphis AD was geeking out about?
About right. Though a year or two ago I thought projections were too optimistic and I was hoping for four million. So I’ll take it.
Now I want to know how much the MWC is going to get.
This isn’t an announcement folks. This is a Memphis internal projection.
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Wouldn’t surprise me if the announcement reflects Memphis’s prediction.