TV Contract Question

Amazons losses weren’t actual losses. They were capital infrastructure expenditures. When try first went public they were showing continual losses and investors started to worry so Amazon took one quarter and slowed down capital spending. The result was a profit and the rest is history.

I think this got sidetracked a bit by using Netflix as an example. They are probably the worst major streamer to use in a hypothetical: They have no live TV component (Peacock, Paramount, Amazon do or will), no experience with sports (HBO Max parent does), no outside advertising mechanisms (no TV network nor site that sells a bazillion products a day) and I suspect membership that is disproportionately disinterested in sports.

Replace them with Amazon, Peacock, Paramount, HBO Max… and it becomes a much more interesting question.

I would also add that technical competence in the area of sports matters a lot.

If you’d have asked I would have thought Twitter and Facebook would be good for Conference USA (compared to alternatives) but both of them did a terrible job with games and it all went terribly.

None of the streamers have figured it out except ESPN (and even ESPN+'s interface is awful it’s just made up for by volume of content), which would be concerning.

ESPN+ is an easy sell to a sports fan if they have to subscribe to a service. Netflix and Amazon, not so much. Yeah, I know, THE FUTURE and all that. The glories of a streaming future have been coming at us since every other yesterday and it hasn’t arrived yet.

Very simply, streaming is the future. Fox has no streaming platform. Watch, in a few weeks the EPL is going to have all 20 of it’s games kick off simultaneously for the last Sunday of the season. Comcast (NBC/Peacock) will have all 20 games being broadcast on one of its properties. Fox can’t come anywhere near that coverage.

If Comcast can do that for the EPL, they can do it for CFB. Remember, NBC bid for AAC games, but it was matched by ESPN who had a right of first refusal. Yes, they have ND football now, but the contracts are up for bid. NBC already had a trial balloon and put an ND game on Peacock last year.

The streaming platforms of NBC makes sense now in your ranking.

Ultimately, we cannot sign an exclusive deal with Fox or NBC. Neither has remotely enough to offer. But I’m more sure that Fox would let us take the rest of our games elsewhere and I’d be worried that NBC would want to put them all on Peacock. Combine that with the fact that Fox would likely televise a lot more games to begin with, we should talk to Fox first.

Alongside someone else, Fox has quite a lot to offer.

20 teams, 10 games. But still a bunch, yes.

Netflix had around a million subscribers in Russia. They dropped the market in the sanctions. They actually grew without that blip.

https://twitter.com/slmandel/status/1521523864198471680?s=20&t=50UhlDmjBEtrdOq4LrkelA

The worst case for us I think is Big Ten goes with Fox and CBS, more or less taking both off the board (or at least greatly reducing how much they need us.)

Rooting for NBC here, or one of the streamers.

However, if the Big 10 excludes ESPN that may be good for the Big 12 as they will then absolutely NEED some Big 12 content and will have to keep the Big 12 in the national conversation.

I wouldn’t mind giving another network the Big 12’s primary rights and then giving ESPN secondary rights.

True, and I’m hoping ESPN plays a pretty significant role in our contract. But they’ll only pay up if there’s another bidder, so I want CBS in on the action.

Also remember the Pac-12 has to do their TV contract before us so we are not sure who will be their providers.

A couple of years ago espn renegotiated a deal with the big12 that consolidated all big12 schools ( except OU ad UT) media rights and moved their games to espn+ starting 2021, except for occasional games in their linear lineup

Espn then hatched a plan to move OU to UT to the SEC. The big12 is nothing but a glorified AAC to espn, their prized horse is the SEC.

Hopefully, big12 can reach a deal with Fox and NBC, with some games in espn+

If espn is left out of the BIG deal, I think they go all in with the pac12.

BIG schools set to receive 71 million per year in new deal to be signed by Memorial Day.

Alex, just what is WB?

And that’s $71M per school now, not in 2029 and it’s before you add CFP money, bowl money and March Madness money.

No one is leaving the B1G and they are not expanding.

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This . 100% agree . Now let’s see how long that deal is.

The ACC’s tv deal with espn is $ 240 million annually, that’s $17 million per school with grant of rights (GOR) through 2036. They are going to find away to break up that GOR.

Warner Bros. TBS/TNT/TruTV