Just a reminder that we’ll be entering a new world next season…
That’s probably a 3:30 game if we’re still in the SEC on CBS world.
Announcing that on Good Morning America is an interesting touch.
Category Archives: ESPN Is The Devil
Just another game now
Idiots.
You spend years building a brand — the 3:30 game on CBS is the SEC — only to throw it away with the new broadcast deal. It’ll just be another slot on the schedule.
I know this wasn’t Sankey’s idea, but ESPN’s. No matter, when you climb in bed with Mickey, this is what you get.
Filed under ESPN Is The Devil, SEC Football
Sweet deal
While Cal, SMU and Stanford are taking shaves to join the ACC, Oklahoma and Texas are getting checks… from Mickey.
… According to the SEC’s responses to questions provided in writing by the USA TODAY Network, a set of such modifications to the SEC’s football schedule “includes the Universities of Oklahoma and Texas becoming part of the SEC’s schedule.”
This money will be coming from ESPN, which is taking over the SEC’s featured Saturday afternoon/evening football TV rights package from CBS, beginning in 2024.
And there is more from ESPN.
Each school’s agreement with the SEC states: “The Institution has represented to the SEC that ESPN, Inc., or an affiliate of ESPN, Inc., has agreed to make a transition payment to the SEC, over and above all rights fees and other payments otherwise payable to the SEC by ESPN, Inc., and its affiliates, earmarked and designated for distribution to the Institution.” The agreements do not say how much this payment will be, and the schools and the SEC declined to comment about the amount.
Meanwhile, Texas and OU are getting other payments from ESPN under contract modifications that will shut down agreements for so-called third-tier rights to events including football and men’s basketball but primarily involving sports such as volleyball, women’s basketball, softball and baseball, and with OU, wrestling and gymnastics. Those rights will convey to the SEC, and, in turn, to the ESPN-owned SEC Network.
Texas’ Longhorn Network was created in 2011 under an agreement with ESPN and the entity now known as IMG College that had been scheduled to run through 2031 and guaranteed Texas a total of nearly $300 million. Because the guaranteed annual rights fee was set to increase each year, from 2024-25 through 2030-31, Texas had been set to collect a combined total of nearly $125 million.
The amendment covering the terms of the network’s wind-down includes a payment from ESPN to Texas that is set to be made on or before June 21, 2024 “in exchange for certain institutional rights throughout the 2024/2025 academic year.” The amount of the payment was redacted from a document obtained from the university, which declined to comment on the nature of the institutional rights it is providing to ESPN.
OU’s agreement with ESPN began with the 2022-23 school year and had been set to guarantee the school $2 million a year for three years. Similar to the Texas arrangement, the contract between Oklahoma and ESPN has been changed to include ESPN agreeing to make a payment to the university on July 1, 2024 “in exchange for certain institutional rights throughout the 2024/2025 academic year.” Also as with Texas’ deal, the amount of the payment was redacted from a document obtained from the university, which declined to comment on the nature of the institutional rights it is providing to ESPN.
Two things from that: (1) anyone who says there isn’t enough money in college football to fund everything is a liar and (2) it raises the level to which schools — SEC schools in particular — are beholden to ESPN. (As part of their deal, Oklahoma had to agree not to modify or cancel its upcoming series with Michigan and Nebraska, for example.)
If there’s one rule of thumb for 21st century college athletics, it’s that money talks.
Filed under ESPN Is The Devil, It's Just Bidness, SEC Football
Turn those computers back on!
Filed under ESPN Is The Devil, Stats Geek!
We’ll watch anything.
FYI.
Disney said in release this week that No. 1 Georgia’s 48-7 win over Tennessee-Martin on ESPN+ is the most-streamed college football game in ever on that platform. ESPN+ is Disney’s streaming service which caters to sports fans.
“Saturday (Sept. 2) was the most-viewed day of college football ever on ESPN+, and two-time defending CFP National Champion and top-ranked Georgia scored a season-opening win and the most-watched college football game on the platform all-time,” Disney said in an e-mail.
Don’t get any ideas, Mickey.
(h/t)
Filed under ESPN Is The Devil, Georgia Football
And now, a word from our sponsors
Jesus, this is worse than I thought.
Almost a third of the total broadcast time was commercials?
Obviously, the solution is to take a few more plays out of the games.
Filed under ESPN Is The Devil, It's Just Bidness
TFW you think you’re living in the material world, but you ain’t
Gosh, hard to believe this plan was a bust.
Wonder what that professor’s response was when Mickey told them to fuck off.
Filed under ESPN Is The Devil, General Idiocy, Pac-12 Football
“We all know now that we were flailing for the entirety of the time we were in the marketplace.”
Wanna know why the Pac-12 is no longer a thing? This ought to clear that up.
The Pac-12 got an offer of $30 million per school from ESPN in the fall of 2022. It included all the conference’s media rights, including the Pac-12 Network. But the conference presidents and chancellors believed they could do much better.
The board instructed Kliavkoff to reject ESPN’s proposal and make a lopsided counter-offer. The commissioner should have pushed back and managed expectations in the room. He should have been more tuned into the eroding media landscape. Kliavkoff followed the order and the consequences were grave.
Source to me: “You know what we told ESPN after their $30 million per-school offer?”
Me: “What?”
Source: “We said we want $50 million per school.”
Me: “What was the ESPN response?”
Source: “Goodbye.”
I can only imagine the laughter that ensued after Mickey hung up the phone. Contrary to what they believe, these school chancellors and presidents aren’t nearly as shrewd as they think they are.
For that matter, neither is Kliavkoff.
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UPDATE:Â More deets here.
Do-overs? Absolutely, Kirk Schulz has a list of decisions he’d like back following the collapse of the Pac-12.
The Washington State president and chair of the Pac-12 board was heavily involved in the media rights saga that spanned 13 months and ended last week in a failed effort to save the conference.
“We should have had a more robust conversations about our value in the marketplace,” Schulz told the Hotline on Friday.
The failure to accept market reality led the Pac-12 presidents last fall to reject an offer of $30 million per year (per school) from ESPN for the entirety of the conference’s football and men’s basketball media inventory, according to JohnCanzano.com.
Instead, the presidents instructed commissioner George Kliavkoff to pursue a deal in the $50 million per-school range.
“Two or three schools were interested in that number,” Schulz said. “The discussions were that we really had to close the gap on the Big Ten. The commissioner went off with those numbers, which were unrealistic for sure.”
A source familiar with the negotiations told the Hotline this week that one president even believed the valuation “should be in the 50s” — meaning, more than $50 million per school. (The source declined to identify the president.)
These people are fucking bozos. And “We should have had a more robust conversations about our value in the marketplace” may be the understatement of the year.
Filed under ESPN Is The Devil, It's Just Bidness, Pac-12 Football
It’s not the future we deserve, but it’s the future we’re gonna get.
ESPN on Tuesday announced a 10-year deal with Penn Entertainment, a casino company, to create an online sports betting brand called ESPN Bet, catapulting the sports entertainment network into the lucrative world of online gambling.
Penn will operate the online sports book and pay ESPN $1.5 billion in cash for the use of ESPN’s name, marketing, “access to ESPN talent” and other promotional tools, Penn said in a news release. Penn will also give ESPN options to buy $500 million in Penn stock, the news release said.
Jimmy Pitaro, the chairman of ESPN, said in the news release that he believed ESPN’s strong brand, combined with Penn’s technology and experience running a sports book, provided a “tremendous opportunity to serve the ever-growing number of consumers interested in betting.”
Sad to say, I think Pete Fiutak has this right:
Fans like us aren’t the future of the sport — by “future”, I mean, the driver of college football revenue in the coming years. It’s going to be the casual person, detached from specific team loyalties, who has an on-again, off-again relationship with the sport. Not just people screwing around with sports betting, but the kind of people that only follow ESPN to find out how the latest Yankees-Red Sox chase is going, or what LaBron did. (And, boy, does Mickey cater to those folks.)
Sure, we care more. But there are a lot more of them than there are of us. That’s where the money is. And we know what money means in college sports, right?
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UPDATE: Along the same lines…
Sigh.
Filed under Bet On It, ESPN Is The Devil
How it started, how it’s going and where it’s headed.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mike Gundy, a prophet for our times.
I detect no falsehoods there.
There’s a sixties folk song called “Blues Run The Game“. “Television runs the market” is the college athletics version of that.
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UPDATE: In case you need “Television runs the market” spelled out for you, here you go.
Earlier this summer, Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith told Eleven Warriors that he did not expect the Big Ten to add more teams this year. Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti echoed that belief at Big Ten Media Days in July, saying that conference presidents and athletic directors had instructed him to focus on integrating USC and UCLA next summer.
Just nine days after Petitti’s press conference in Indianapolis, the Big Ten announced the additions of Oregon and Washington, who will join the conference alongside UCLA and USC in the summer of 2024.
What changed? The answer is the one you’d probably expect: More money – specifically, more TV money.
A primary concern leaders from many Big Ten schools had about the potential additions of Oregon and Washington was that they would have to split the conference’s revenue with two more schools. That concern was nullified when Fox, the Big Ten’s primary television partner, gave the conference more money – approximately $30-35 million per year for each of those two schools, according to Smith – to add the Ducks and Huskies.
As a result, Ohio State and the other 15 Big Ten schools (including UCLA and USC) will not see any decrease in revenue from what they were already projected to receive – a number estimated to be approximately $70 million per year for those schools – from their new media rights deal with Fox, CBS and NBC, while Smith believes Oregon and Washington will give the conference even more value in negotiations for future media rights deals.
“The original dollar figures that we had prior to Oregon and Washington coming in stayed the same for those institutions that were already in. Fox brought new money to the table for Oregon and for Washington that they provided,” Smith said during his press conference on Wednesday. “It wasn’t diluted to us…
And so it goes.
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