Expansion Rumors…

I wouldn’t want to go to any other conference except for the SEC. I’m not interested in travelling to MI, Nebraska or Wisc for a football game. Between the NIL and TV $ destroying conference alignment and traditional to rivalries, I’m almost to the point where watching the NFL is more enjoyable. Now the NFL is like CFB without the baggage.
 
I could be wrong but I think with CFB conf realignment armageddon just over the horizon schools like UVA and UNC may be willing to cut their marriages with VT and duke and go for the money. They can always play those rivalries OOC
 
JJacket said:
VT? Why is VT a good fit?
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For the SEC? They have no teams in VA and VT draws large crowds. While they currently seat about 65k, they could fill more if they had a better home slate.

Uva isn’t a good fit. So if the sec wanted to move into VA, it really only has one choice.
 
stinger78 said:
Crickets…
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Maybe a visual would help.
Disney ESPN Coyote.png


There's also this from earlier this month:
Disney to cut 7,000 jobs and slash $5.5 billion in costs as it unveils vast restructuring
www.cnbc.com

Disney to cut 7,000 jobs and slash $5.5 billion in costs as it unveils vast restructuring

Disney unveiled a vast corporate restructuring, and CEO Bob Iger said the company isn't considering a spinoff of ESPN.
www.cnbc.com www.cnbc.com
 
Buzzilla said:
Maybe a visual would help.
Disney ESPN Coyote.png


There's also this from earlier this month:
Disney to cut 7,000 jobs and slash $5.5 billion in costs as it unveils vast restructuring
www.cnbc.com

Disney to cut 7,000 jobs and slash $5.5 billion in costs as it unveils vast restructuring

Disney unveiled a vast corporate restructuring, and CEO Bob Iger said the company isn't considering a spinoff of ESPN.
www.cnbc.com www.cnbc.com
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Dude, you’re going to make a lot of heads explode in here. Many folks already counting the dollars from the imminent SECheat/B1G invite.
 
Buzzilla said:
So no one wants to talk about the sick mouse in the coal mine?
www.latimes.com

Disney+ keeps growing fast. But streaming loses $1.5 billion

The loss underscores the challenges that legacy media companies face as they spend money on new content to compete with Netflix for subscription dollars.
www.latimes.com www.latimes.com

Hemorrhaging subscribers and huge losses? No one? Bueller?
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how fast would ESPN find a way out of the GOR if they were the ones on the losing end right now, not the ACC?
 
greenmachine said:
how fast would ESPN find a way out of the GOR if they were the ones on the losing end right now, not the ACC?
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People somehow have the notion that the money is unlimited. It is not. They’re already looking at ways to shorten games. You know it’s to make room for more advertising.
 
GTLiebs said:
Even if the ACC agrees to a buyout for leaving the GOR early, it would still be prohibitively expensive for a while. Let's use those numbers thrown about for unequal revenue sharing from some pages back as a guess on the value of FSU or Clemson to the conference TV deal; that would be $60 million a year. The contract runs to 2036, so that's 13 or 14 years. So that theoretical value is roughly $800 million plus the $120 million normal exit fee. Even if the ACC let's them leave the GOR for half that, that's half a billion. Let's say the team is able to argue in court that they can't set the value above the even split payout, $36 million. Then it's a total value of like $475 million. The length of time is the big issue. OU/Texas were able to get the Big12 to let them out early for a fee sure, which was $50 million per school for leaving 1 year early.

With the general exit fee and GOR I'd wager no ACC team is getting out for less than $300 million unless the GOR gets struck down completely in court. Maybe that's not an insurmountable number if the other conference will cover a good chunk of it, but I am doubtful that any conference would do that for an ACC team unless killing the conference is their specific goal. The ACC has no motivation to play nice in letting Clemson or FSU out, which would basically kill the conference in general cause if they let those teams off the hook for a check then ESPN will likely renegotiate the TV deal and I doubt the rest of the conference will be willing to sign a GOR again, at which point the conference probably just gets completely pillaged.

Edit: To add from some newer posts, the other alternative away from the huge fees is that so many teams in the conference beyond FSU/Clemson want to leave that they outvote the rest of the teams to dissolve the ACC. This one is hard to put any informed guess on the likelihood though.
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So under your argument, it's at least a 10 year payback for FSU and Clemson? But as time goes on, the GOR gets smaller and the payback shorter.
 
stinger78 said:
People somehow have the notion that the money is unlimited. It is not. They’re already looking at ways to shorten games. You know it’s to make room for more advertising.
Click to expand...
College football broadcast rights are in a huge bubble. Most everything is right now. People are usually willfully blind to bubbles until it's too late. It is my opinion that what has happened with conference expansion and the mad scramble for a seat at the broadcast rights cash buffet is the blowoff top of the bubble. The warning signs are there and have been for a while.

If you read that last article I posted, Disney is telling everyone they have to reduce costs on the front end with the content they are producing and buying the rights for. They fired the CEO last year for a very good reason. They are losing money in the billions and are fully aware they are positioned to lose even more. They are in trouble. They've made a lot of big gambles including on streaming and those bets are looking shaky. All while we are entering a recession and a host of other potentially tumultuous conditions.

They say they aren't gonna spin off ESPN but by isolating it from the rest of their business it sure looks like they are privately considering how to unload it. That could open the door to a lot of unknowns. I would guess ESPN/Disney most likely has buyout options for terminating the conference broadcast rights contracts if their corporate ownership structure changes. It would be interesting to know what those conditions and terms are.

School and program administrators seem to be blind to the possibility that the gravy train is on a very shaky track. Overplaying your hand with big demands and not so veiled threats while positioning your school/program with the expectation the money will show up sure looks short sighted to me. As we've seen lately, train derailments can and inevitably do happen. And they often end very, very, VERY badly.

All of this is just my opinion, but I wouldn't at all be surprised if this whole thing ends in an absolute fiasco. Panic based decisions are seldom good decisions. Sure looks like at best there is going to be a lot of bad blood between a lot of programs before it's over.
 
Yep. As I’ve said ad infinitum, if your relevance is all about the Benjies, you’ll be perpetually chasing relevance. Like you, I’ve seen too many crashes. Blowing up your conference is a bad idea just to get more cash, when at best, that amount will rise again if things do stretch out, and at worse will all collapse if it doesn’t keep going.
 
You have to take the viewership data with a grain of salt. USC and UCLA could get a lot more viewers if their games were being carried in better time slots on better networks. USC in particular could move way up that list and were so in years gone by.

But I don't see any way that teams in a league will be happy sharing money equally. Its got to go to something like proportional on TV viewership revenue splits and the big boys will kick the little boys to the curb and out of their conferences eventually.
 
Let the ACC die. Then let the NCAA die at the same time. Corruption always runs it course. Like Al Capone the ACC and NCAA fleeced society for decades but it’s over now. Everyone now knows. Let it all crumble and let something else emerge. Its way past time.
 
stinger78 said:
Seems to me that our best chance to keep up is for the ACC to add a couple of good programs and force a renegotiation of the TV contract.

If Notre Dame would get off its self-proclaimed pedestal that alone would do it, but they won't
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So, If ND isn't the team joining, then who out there moves the needle enough to "force such a renegotiation/look in" to the TV deal?

The crazy ACC/PAC merger idea is interesting. Outside of such a bold, unlikely move, I think the Big 10/SEC will just have a superleague at some point of about 28-32 teams and the rest of college football will do something resembling the old split of Div. I and Div. Iaa.
 
Buzzilla said:
So no one wants to talk about the sick mouse in the coal mine?
www.latimes.com

Disney+ keeps growing fast. But streaming loses $1.5 billion

The loss underscores the challenges that legacy media companies face as they spend money on new content to compete with Netflix for subscription dollars.
www.latimes.com www.latimes.com

Hemorrhaging subscribers and huge losses? No one? Bueller?
Click to expand...

Is that a "temporary" loss as they ramp up to compete w/Netflix to be king of subscription TV? Live sports is an advantage that Netflix doesn't have. I would imagine that Disney can "tolerate" losses for a while if they think it ends up with them having dominant market share.
 
Buzzilla said:
All of this is just my opinion, but I wouldn't at all be surprised if this whole thing ends in an absolute fiasco. Panic based decisions are seldom good decisions. Sure looks like at best there is going to be a lot of bad blood between a lot of programs before it's over.
Click to expand...

Good post. I will say that quite frankly, having college football "blow up" may not be a bad thing for the sport over the medium to long run. The arms race isn't sustainable but for a small handful of schools.
 
OptionJacket said:
Let the ACC die. Then let the NCAA die at the same time. Corruption always runs it course. Like Al Capone the ACC and NCAA fleeced society for decades but it’s over now. Everyone now knows. Let it all crumble and let something else emerge. Its way past time.
Click to expand...
It’s only worth doing of Tech has a parachute. Otherwise let the diseased body stay alive.
 
GT98 said:
Good post. I will say that quite frankly, having college football "blow up" may not be a bad thing for the sport over the medium to long run. The arms race isn't sustainable but for a small handful of schools.
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The complicating factor, I think, is that it isn't sustainable if there is some sort of premier league of just that small handful of schools either. I don' think CFB will have enough appeal anymore if it's just made up of the 15-20 schools who can currently pour nearly unlimited funds into it. The lucrative TV money won't be there if it's just an Ohio State and Alabama league.
 
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