ESPN+ is hiding Big-12 basketball. The only viewers are subscribers, typically intense fans. It is also under paying the Big-12.
Suppose in 2031 a company with interests like Amazon contracts to show all Big-12 games with free or Prime membership. That company would then reach basketball fans World wide including casual fans. Marketing World wide should have huge value.
EDIT
The intent was:
just being on ESPN+ hides BB from most viewers.
There are basketball fans all over the World. Casual viewers and those from other countries would watch Big-12 basketball if it was streamed but they won’t pay to watch.
Let the only requirement be an Amazon account. Allow people to watch after opening an account with no requirement to buy anything. Once people in other countries have an account, they will tend to purchase items from Amazon.
This is why the concept of the PAC 10 getting a large package is a crock. They’re basically hoping that they can shift a bulk of their tv revenue onto streaming subscribers. It isn’t gonna work because the market has not shifted to a la carte subscription yet. The vast majority of sports fans don’t pay for extra stuff. Just the hard core. Kliavkoff should just send a mailer out asking for money and then call it TV revenue.
ESPN+ is worth $10 per month to anyone who calls him/herself a sports fan. Fights, baseball, field hockey, hoops, football, soccer, everything is on there.
Let’s say that ESPN was giving fans a steady diet of St. John’s vs Fordham type matchups. Would you watch that or pay $10 to see good games?
Even if ESPN put games back on a free WatchESPN app like they had before, I doubt the viewership of the ESPN+ games goes up much, if at all. The people who want to switch over to an app to watch a game not good enough to make cable probably isn’t much higher than those who are willing to pay $10/month to do so.