(03-26-2017 11:55 AM)CougarRed Wrote:  

(03-26-2017 11:06 AM)shizzle787 Wrote:  What about Turner getting involved?

How does Turner get involved before 2020?

I can't see any other network bidding for rights in 2018 unless:

1. Adding Wichita somehow voids our contract allowing us to go the open market which I highly doubt,

2. Adding Wichita does allow for renegotiation with ESPN for 2018, and ESPN decides it only wants a limited number of football and basketball games, allowing the American to go to market for the rest -- with or without a right to match.

#2 seems unlikely as well. Particularly if ESPN can get it all, and then sublicense the Tier 2 games to CBSSports like they do now.

Turner WAS interested in the Big East, when it was still unified, but lost interest once the league split.

(03-27-2017 04:28 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(03-27-2017 02:22 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  I've actually had the chance to read some ESPN contracts.

Each had the following features.
- Look in periods. Nothing more than designated times where one party or the other can request that they look at the contract discuss extending it or it ending it early. If there is no agreement the existing contract rolls along. Mostly a pointless clause in that it restricts the times when a party can ask to deal but they can both waive that by agreement. But if one side doesn't like the terms proposed there is no obligation to do anything.
- Period of exclusive negotiation. As the contract nears expiration there is a time period where the party is only allowed to talk to ESPN.
- Period of open negotiation. If you don't like ESPN's offer at the end of the exclusive period you can talk to others but in doing so, you've rejected ESPN's offer and it is now off the table.
- ESPN then holds the right extend the agreement by simply accepting the exact terms of a bono fide offer the other party has received. As we saw with the AAC this can work to ESPN's advantage. NBC was looking to buy the whole banana and put games on some low household number channels. ESPN was easily able to address that by taking stuff to ESPN News and subbing content to CBS Sports Net.

The current MAC deal was produced during a look in period so those do matter.

Well, it sounds like we had to accept their offer. Is that clause typically in the contracts of other networks (Fox, NBC, CBS-Sports, etc)?

It is all in how you read it. holding the right to "extend the agreement" doesn't mean they had to take it. The "extending" of the agreement is the loophole to allow the league to back out of the contract they signed with NBC: they did not have to take it. I know for a fact the AAC did not have to take it: they took several days to decide which one they wanted to do. What they could not

(03-28-2017 04:38 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  

(03-27-2017 04:28 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(03-27-2017 02:22 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  I've actually had the chance to read some ESPN contracts.

Each had the following features.
- Look in periods. Nothing more than designated times where one party or the other can request that they look at the contract discuss extending it or it ending it early. If there is no agreement the existing contract rolls along. Mostly a pointless clause in that it restricts the times when a party can ask to deal but they can both waive that by agreement. But if one side doesn't like the terms proposed there is no obligation to do anything.
- Period of exclusive negotiation. As the contract nears expiration there is a time period where the party is only allowed to talk to ESPN.
- Period of open negotiation. If you don't like ESPN's offer at the end of the exclusive period you can talk to others but in doing so, you've rejected ESPN's offer and it is now off the table.
- ESPN then holds the right extend the agreement by simply accepting the exact terms of a bono fide offer the other party has received. As we saw with the AAC this can work to ESPN's advantage. NBC was looking to buy the whole banana and put games on some low household number channels. ESPN was easily able to address that by taking stuff to ESPN News and subbing content to CBS Sports Net.

The current MAC deal was produced during a look in period so those do matter.

Well, it sounds like we had to accept their offer. Is that clause typically in the contracts of other networks (Fox, NBC, CBS-Sports, etc)?

It is all in how you read it. holding the right to "extend the agreement" doesn't mean they had to take it. The "extending" of the agreement is the loophole to allow the league to back out of the contract they signed with NBC: they did not have to take it. I know for a fact the AAC did not have to take it: they took several days to decide which one they wanted to do. What they could not

Well--that's what I always thought, but I can't find a single published report that says that. Like I said, I remember the board was able to find that the actual language said we could accept either offer---but that is not reflected in any published report I can find.

(03-28-2017 05:12 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(03-28-2017 04:38 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  

(03-27-2017 04:28 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(03-27-2017 02:22 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  I've actually had the chance to read some ESPN contracts.

Each had the following features.
- Look in periods. Nothing more than designated times where one party or the other can request that they look at the contract discuss extending it or it ending it early. If there is no agreement the existing contract rolls along. Mostly a pointless clause in that it restricts the times when a party can ask to deal but they can both waive that by agreement. But if one side doesn't like the terms proposed there is no obligation to do anything.
- Period of exclusive negotiation. As the contract nears expiration there is a time period where the party is only allowed to talk to ESPN.
- Period of open negotiation. If you don't like ESPN's offer at the end of the exclusive period you can talk to others but in doing so, you've rejected ESPN's offer and it is now off the table.
- ESPN then holds the right extend the agreement by simply accepting the exact terms of a bono fide offer the other party has received. As we saw with the AAC this can work to ESPN's advantage. NBC was looking to buy the whole banana and put games on some low household number channels. ESPN was easily able to address that by taking stuff to ESPN News and subbing content to CBS Sports Net.

The current MAC deal was produced during a look in period so those do matter.

Well, it sounds like we had to accept their offer. Is that clause typically in the contracts of other networks (Fox, NBC, CBS-Sports, etc)?

It is all in how you read it. holding the right to "extend the agreement" doesn't mean they had to take it. The "extending" of the agreement is the loophole to allow the league to back out of the contract they signed with NBC: they did not have to take it. I know for a fact the AAC did not have to take it: they took several days to decide which one they wanted to do. What they could not

Well--that's what I always thought, but I can't find a single published report that says that. Like I said, I remember the board was able to find that the actual language said we could accept either offer---but that is not reflected in any published report I can find.

I at least found a post of mine that addresses the question. We were trying to figure out what exactly ESPN had to match--money obviously, but what about timeslot guarantees? OTA games? etc.

Here's the post from 2013

Quote:

Quote:b0ndsj0ns Wrote:
Here is the simple question I have that I haven't seen an answer to is matching the deal just about matching the money or is it about matching the entire deal? Like if the deal is a number of games per week on Saturdays, Thursdays, and whatever else it says can ESPN just match the dollar amount and say all the games will be mid week filler and ESPN3 stuff and that would constitute matching or would they have to offer similar guarantees about dates, times, and number of games on actual TV?

According to what Jersey Guy said in his comment section, the Big East is obligated to tell ESPN the terms of the deal and then ESPN has a certain time period to counteroffer. That's it.

I was wrong and loud wrong on that. Sorry.

Found someone else's old post. Our source was a comment by Mark Blaudschun on his website, which doesn't seem to exist anymore.

Here's the link

And here's the quote:

"ESPN does not have right of first refusal. The wording is that the Big East is obligated to tell ESPN the deal and allow them to make an offer. But the Big east has the right to say no and choose who it wants."

(03-28-2017 05:48 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  Found someone else's old post. Our source was a comment by Mark Blaudschun on his website, which doesn't seem to exist anymore.

Here's the link

And here's the quote:

"ESPN does not have right of first refusal. The wording is that the Big East is obligated to tell ESPN the deal and allow them to make an offer. But the Big east has the right to say no and choose who it wants."

And that would be in line with what I remember and with the CUSA/Fox/ESPN court dispute years earlier. If ESPN had the right to match--then ESPN would have received the rights to CUSA--not just the CCG (which they pay for by the way).

(03-28-2017 05:56 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(03-28-2017 05:48 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  Found someone else's old post. Our source was a comment by Mark Blaudschun on his website, which doesn't seem to exist anymore.

Here's the link

And here's the quote:

"ESPN does not have right of first refusal. The wording is that the Big East is obligated to tell ESPN the deal and allow them to make an offer. But the Big east has the right to say no and choose who it wants."

And that would be in line with what I remember and with the CUSA/Fox/ESPN court dispute years earlier. If ESPN had the right to match--then ESPN would have received the rights to CUSA--not just the CCG (which they pay for by the way).

I think that was a court settlement though--ESPN got the CUSA CCG for free, didn't they? Everyone was a little happier that way--ESPN didn't pay CUSA $14M for games they didn't want to show anyway, CUSA played on Saturdays and Thursdays on FSN and CBS-SN, Fox and CBS had games to show.

If AAC had the right to reject ESPN's match... why not reject it?
I know ESPN has the eyeballs but tactically it makes no sense.

NBCSN already had the Premier League deal that was pulling surprising audiences and made for a good lead in. The network already had good brand awareness in NHL markets and seven of the 12 teams are in or very close to NHL markets. NBC/Comcasts RSN's are strong over a big portion of the league.

AAC was going to get most favored status in several broadcast windows and getting bumped to NBC more likely that going over on to ABC.

(03-28-2017 06:26 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(03-28-2017 05:56 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(03-28-2017 05:48 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  Found someone else's old post. Our source was a comment by Mark Blaudschun on his website, which doesn't seem to exist anymore.

Here's the link

And here's the quote:

"ESPN does not have right of first refusal. The wording is that the Big East is obligated to tell ESPN the deal and allow them to make an offer. But the Big east has the right to say no and choose who it wants."

And that would be in line with what I remember and with the CUSA/Fox/ESPN court dispute years earlier. If ESPN had the right to match--then ESPN would have received the rights to CUSA--not just the CCG (which they pay for by the way).

I think that was a court settlement though--ESPN got the CUSA CCG for free, didn't they? Everyone was a little happier that way--ESPN didn't pay CUSA $14M for games they didn't want to show anyway, CUSA played on Saturdays and Thursdays on FSN and CBS-SN, Fox and CBS had games to show.

The Matt Sarz site claimed ESPN paid 4 million for the game. That's where I got it from.

(03-28-2017 04:38 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  

(03-27-2017 04:28 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(03-27-2017 02:22 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  I've actually had the chance to read some ESPN contracts.

Each had the following features.
- Look in periods. Nothing more than designated times where one party or the other can request that they look at the contract discuss extending it or it ending it early. If there is no agreement the existing contract rolls along. Mostly a pointless clause in that it restricts the times when a party can ask to deal but they can both waive that by agreement. But if one side doesn't like the terms proposed there is no obligation to do anything.
- Period of exclusive negotiation. As the contract nears expiration there is a time period where the party is only allowed to talk to ESPN.
- Period of open negotiation. If you don't like ESPN's offer at the end of the exclusive period you can talk to others but in doing so, you've rejected ESPN's offer and it is now off the table.
- ESPN then holds the right extend the agreement by simply accepting the exact terms of a bono fide offer the other party has received. As we saw with the AAC this can work to ESPN's advantage. NBC was looking to buy the whole banana and put games on some low household number channels. ESPN was easily able to address that by taking stuff to ESPN News and subbing content to CBS Sports Net.

The current MAC deal was produced during a look in period so those do matter.

Well, it sounds like we had to accept their offer. Is that clause typically in the contracts of other networks (Fox, NBC, CBS-Sports, etc)?

It is all in how you read it. holding the right to "extend the agreement" doesn't mean they had to take it. The "extending" of the agreement is the loophole to allow the league to back out of the contract they signed with NBC: they did not have to take it. I know for a fact the AAC did not have to take it: they took several days to decide which one they wanted to do. What they could not

what do you think the aac should have done?

Sent from my SM-J700T using CSNbbs mobile app

(03-28-2017 10:35 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  If AAC had the right to reject ESPN's match... why not reject it?
I know ESPN has the eyeballs but tactically it makes no sense.

NBCSN already had the Premier League deal that was pulling surprising audiences and made for a good lead in. The network already had good brand awareness in NHL markets and seven of the 12 teams are in or very close to NHL markets. NBC/Comcasts RSN's are strong over a big portion of the league.

AAC was going to get most favored status in several broadcast windows and getting bumped to NBC more likely that going over on to ABC.

Look at the ratings for FS1 vs ESPN. Looking at the Big 12 and PAC ratings, being on ESPN vs FS1 is worth about 3X the audience. NBC-SN would be as bad, or worse. You might get an extra OTA game or two a year, but NBC affiliates are not going to be happy about dumping mildly profitable Saturday afternoon programming for the 6th or 9th biggest college football game of a weekend.

Aresco got the AAC very good coverage guarantees from ESPN. They have a lot of games on ESPN and ESPN 2, and almost every game is on TV somewhere, even if it's ESPNews or CBS-SN.

They don't like it when I suggest this, but if they had to choose between their ESPN coverage package and no TV money, and say $5M per school from Fox or NBC, they'd stay with ESPN.

I remember when I was a kid when the FOX first got NFL broadcasts, it was a huge boost to legitimizing that channel. I knew The Simpsons were on FOX, but I don't think I ever really watched the channel before that point.

I think the CW might be better positioned now than FOX was then. Would the MWC or AAC consider signing with them to get 1 or 2 Saturday games broadcast over the air in normal time slots, instead of settling for weekday games or really late broadcasts from ESPN?

The CW is partially owned by CBS, so I'm not sure if CBS would be willing to broadcast sports on The CW that would put it in more competition with its own primary channel, but MWC/AAC could be a great entry and introduce the station to a wider audience. If they did start doing national sports broadcasting on the CW, I would think that CBS would prefer it to be G5 conference or other "lesser brands" (MLS?) that wouldn't be able to get airtime on the big four.

We've seen some reports of Netflix or Amazon getting into sports broadcasting, but I'd think conferences would prefer going with over the air broadcasting, even if it is on a lesser known channel, than signing with an internet only company. According to wiki, The CW reaches 98.83% of all households in the United States making it the largest U.S. broadcast network by population reach percentage; so even though it's not watched as much as FOX/ABC/NBC/CBS, it's certainly available to be watched by large audiences.

(03-29-2017 05:55 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(03-28-2017 10:35 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  If AAC had the right to reject ESPN's match... why not reject it?
I know ESPN has the eyeballs but tactically it makes no sense.

NBCSN already had the Premier League deal that was pulling surprising audiences and made for a good lead in. The network already had good brand awareness in NHL markets and seven of the 12 teams are in or very close to NHL markets. NBC/Comcasts RSN's are strong over a big portion of the league.

AAC was going to get most favored status in several broadcast windows and getting bumped to NBC more likely that going over on to ABC.

Look at the ratings for FS1 vs ESPN. Looking at the Big 12 and PAC ratings, being on ESPN vs FS1 is worth about 3X the audience. NBC-SN would be as bad, or worse. You might get an extra OTA game or two a year, but NBC affiliates are not going to be happy about dumping mildly profitable Saturday afternoon programming for the 6th or 9th biggest college football game of a weekend.

Aresco got the AAC very good coverage guarantees from ESPN. They have a lot of games on ESPN and ESPN 2, and almost every game is on TV somewhere, even if it's ESPNews or CBS-SN.

They don't like it when I suggest this, but if they had to choose between their ESPN coverage package and no TV money, and say $5M per school from Fox or NBC, they'd stay with ESPN.

Maybe---on thier first contract. But those schools can't keep up the university subsidy to the athletic department forever. I suspect the idea was to create a higher profile for the brand new conference and then to cash in later on that higher profile. My guess is they will be looking to get at least what the Big East is getting this time around.

(03-29-2017 05:55 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(03-28-2017 10:35 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  If AAC had the right to reject ESPN's match... why not reject it?
I know ESPN has the eyeballs but tactically it makes no sense.

NBCSN already had the Premier League deal that was pulling surprising audiences and made for a good lead in. The network already had good brand awareness in NHL markets and seven of the 12 teams are in or very close to NHL markets. NBC/Comcasts RSN's are strong over a big portion of the league.

AAC was going to get most favored status in several broadcast windows and getting bumped to NBC more likely that going over on to ABC.

Look at the ratings for FS1 vs ESPN. Looking at the Big 12 and PAC ratings, being on ESPN vs FS1 is worth about 3X the audience. NBC-SN would be as bad, or worse. You might get an extra OTA game or two a year, but NBC affiliates are not going to be happy about dumping mildly profitable Saturday afternoon programming for the 6th or 9th biggest college football game of a weekend.

Aresco got the AAC very good coverage guarantees from ESPN. They have a lot of games on ESPN and ESPN 2, and almost every game is on TV somewhere, even if it's ESPNews or CBS-SN.

They don't like it when I suggest this, but if they had to choose between their ESPN coverage package and no TV money, and say $5M per school from Fox or NBC, they'd stay with ESPN.

The FS1 ratings gap is narrowing and there is a difference between being priority 6 and priority 1. Since more than half the league operates in areas where NBCSN has good brand awareness, playing the short game instead of long game looks foolish. IF THEY HAD A CHOICE.

(03-29-2017 07:46 AM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(03-29-2017 05:55 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  They don't like it when I suggest this, but if they had to choose between their ESPN coverage package and no TV money, and say $5M per school from Fox or NBC, they'd stay with ESPN.

Maybe---on thier first contract. But those schools can't keep up the university subsidy to the athletic department forever. I suspect the idea was to create a higher profile for the brand new conference and then to cash in later on that higher profile. My guess is they will be looking to get at least what the Big East is getting this time around.

It's not about what you're looking to get. It's about what offers are on the table. ESPN would be pushing it to offer "Same game lineup, but no money", but I fully expect ESPN to offer an extension of the existing contract under mostly the same terms, financially and coverage-wise.

The wild card is Navy. Navy has decent-sized CBS contracts for it's home games, plus the contract for the Army-Navy game. But those contracts are rolling into the AAC contract going forward.

(03-29-2017 08:56 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  The FS1 ratings gap is narrowing and there is a difference between being priority 6 and priority 1. Since more than half the league operates in areas where NBCSN has good brand awareness, playing the short game instead of long game looks foolish. IF THEY HAD A CHOICE.

It's narrowing, but it's not closing any time soon. And NBC Sports doesn't have the list of properties that Fox has boosting FS1.

You're valuing the Comcast Sports Nets, when I don't think conferences are valuing those at all in today's environment. You're recruiting nationally, you want to be on nationally. People look up what channel the game is on, they want the name of the actual channel or network, not "Comcast/Fox Sports Net--check local listings" only to find Fox Sports Ohio is carrying the Cavaliers instead of the Bearcats, sorry.

(03-28-2017 05:56 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(03-28-2017 05:48 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  Found someone else's old post. Our source was a comment by Mark Blaudschun on his website, which doesn't seem to exist anymore.

Here's the link

And here's the quote:

"ESPN does not have right of first refusal. The wording is that the Big East is obligated to tell ESPN the deal and allow them to make an offer. But the Big east has the right to say no and choose who it wants."

And that would be in line with what I remember and with the CUSA/Fox/ESPN court dispute years earlier. If ESPN had the right to match--then ESPN would have received the rights to CUSA--not just the CCG (which they pay for by the way).

But the CCG was the "settlement." The issue didn't go to court. ESPN got what they really wanted.

(03-29-2017 09:17 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(03-29-2017 07:46 AM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(03-29-2017 05:55 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  They don't like it when I suggest this, but if they had to choose between their ESPN coverage package and no TV money, and say $5M per school from Fox or NBC, they'd stay with ESPN.

Maybe---on thier first contract. But those schools can't keep up the university subsidy to the athletic department forever. I suspect the idea was to create a higher profile for the brand new conference and then to cash in later on that higher profile. My guess is they will be looking to get at least what the Big East is getting this time around.

It's not about what you're looking to get. It's about what offers are on the table. ESPN would be pushing it to offer "Same game lineup, but no money", but I fully expect ESPN to offer an extension of the existing contract under mostly the same terms, financially and coverage-wise.

The wild card is Navy. Navy has decent-sized CBS contracts for it's home games, plus the contract for the Army-Navy game. But those contracts are rolling into the AAC contract going forward.

(03-29-2017 08:56 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  The FS1 ratings gap is narrowing and there is a difference between being priority 6 and priority 1. Since more than half the league operates in areas where NBCSN has good brand awareness, playing the short game instead of long game looks foolish. IF THEY HAD A CHOICE.

It's narrowing, but it's not closing any time soon. And NBC Sports doesn't have the list of properties that Fox has boosting FS1.

You're valuing the Comcast Sports Nets, when I don't think conferences are valuing those at all in today's environment. You're recruiting nationally, you want to be on nationally. People look up what channel the game is on, they want the name of the actual channel or network, not "Comcast/Fox Sports Net--check local listings" only to find Fox Sports Ohio is carrying the Cavaliers instead of the Bearcats, sorry.

Then the AAC would accept the NBC offer for 5 million. They would do that for several reasons--

1). They need the money.

2). The ESPN audience was 98 million when they signed the current deal. Now it's 88 million and shrinking at 300-600K a month. The ESPN exposure argument literally gets weaker every month. If money is on the table, it's time to cash in.

3). They would be the only FBS conference on NBC and the primary college football focus of NBC (other than Notre Dame).

(03-29-2017 09:39 AM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(03-29-2017 09:17 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(03-29-2017 07:46 AM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(03-29-2017 05:55 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  They don't like it when I suggest this, but if they had to choose between their ESPN coverage package and no TV money, and say $5M per school from Fox or NBC, they'd stay with ESPN.

Maybe---on thier first contract. But those schools can't keep up the university subsidy to the athletic department forever. I suspect the idea was to create a higher profile for the brand new conference and then to cash in later on that higher profile. My guess is they will be looking to get at least what the Big East is getting this time around.

It's not about what you're looking to get. It's about what offers are on the table. ESPN would be pushing it to offer "Same game lineup, but no money", but I fully expect ESPN to offer an extension of the existing contract under mostly the same terms, financially and coverage-wise.

The wild card is Navy. Navy has decent-sized CBS contracts for it's home games, plus the contract for the Army-Navy game. But those contracts are rolling into the AAC contract going forward.

(03-29-2017 08:56 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  The FS1 ratings gap is narrowing and there is a difference between being priority 6 and priority 1. Since more than half the league operates in areas where NBCSN has good brand awareness, playing the short game instead of long game looks foolish. IF THEY HAD A CHOICE.

It's narrowing, but it's not closing any time soon. And NBC Sports doesn't have the list of properties that Fox has boosting FS1.

You're valuing the Comcast Sports Nets, when I don't think conferences are valuing those at all in today's environment. You're recruiting nationally, you want to be on nationally. People look up what channel the game is on, they want the name of the actual channel or network, not "Comcast/Fox Sports Net--check local listings" only to find Fox Sports Ohio is carrying the Cavaliers instead of the Bearcats, sorry.

Then the AAC would accept the NBC offer for 5 million. They would do that for several reasons--

1). They need the money.

2). The ESPN audience was 98 million when they signed the current deal. Now it's 88 million and shrinking at 300-600K a month. The ESPN exposure argument literally gets weaker every month. If money is on the table, it's time to cash in.

3). They would be the only FBS conference on NBC and the primary college football focus of NBC (other than Notre Dame).

Might be the move to make. If your audience is the same in 2022 on the NBC or ESPN Sports App as it is on HoustonCougars.tv, might as well take the cash before it's gone.

Or ESPN might preserve some value as one of a half-dozen to a dozen platforms that people will plunk down and flip through to see what's on. Maybe.

(03-28-2017 04:38 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  

(03-27-2017 04:28 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(03-27-2017 02:22 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  I've actually had the chance to read some ESPN contracts.

Each had the following features.
- Look in periods. Nothing more than designated times where one party or the other can request that they look at the contract discuss extending it or it ending it early. If there is no agreement the existing contract rolls along. Mostly a pointless clause in that it restricts the times when a party can ask to deal but they can both waive that by agreement. But if one side doesn't like the terms proposed there is no obligation to do anything.
- Period of exclusive negotiation. As the contract nears expiration there is a time period where the party is only allowed to talk to ESPN.
- Period of open negotiation. If you don't like ESPN's offer at the end of the exclusive period you can talk to others but in doing so, you've rejected ESPN's offer and it is now off the table.
- ESPN then holds the right extend the agreement by simply accepting the exact terms of a bono fide offer the other party has received. As we saw with the AAC this can work to ESPN's advantage. NBC was looking to buy the whole banana and put games on some low household number channels. ESPN was easily able to address that by taking stuff to ESPN News and subbing content to CBS Sports Net.

The current MAC deal was produced during a look in period so those do matter.

Well, it sounds like we had to accept their offer. Is that clause typically in the contracts of other networks (Fox, NBC, CBS-Sports, etc)?

It is all in how you read it. holding the right to "extend the agreement" doesn't mean they had to take it. The "extending" of the agreement is the loophole to allow the league to back out of the contract they signed with NBC: they did not have to take it. I know for a fact the AAC did not have to take it: they took several days to decide which one they wanted to do. ...

My recollection was that those days were spent not deciding which to take, but deciding whether ESPN had in fact actually "matched" the NBC offer in all relevant particulars.

That's consistent with a situation in which the match clause was such that the AAC had no choice but to sign with ESPN if they matched the NBC offer - even in that situation, they would have the right to spend some time having their lawyers check out the details of the ESPN 'match' to make sure it actually was a match and didn't have different clauses.

Really, without the actual contract details, we're all guessing to a degree.

What still doesn't sit well with me is that if the match clause was as Coog and yourself say it was, then it's really rather substanceless: I currently have a deal with B and it has a match clause. So when I get an offer from A, the contract says I must then take that offer to B so they have the chance to match, but ... even if B matches A, I'm not obligated to take B, and so long as the deal with A isn't actually a signed contract, I can also go back to A and say "hey, B just matched you, would you like to up your offer?", which if they do, I then take back to B to "match", etc.

That doesn't sound like a "match" situation, it just sounds like a courtesy notification to B when I get offers from others followed by possible continued bidding.

(03-29-2017 09:17 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(03-29-2017 07:46 AM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(03-29-2017 05:55 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  They don't like it when I suggest this, but if they had to choose between their ESPN coverage package and no TV money, and say $5M per school from Fox or NBC, they'd stay with ESPN.

Maybe---on thier first contract. But those schools can't keep up the university subsidy to the athletic department forever. I suspect the idea was to create a higher profile for the brand new conference and then to cash in later on that higher profile. My guess is they will be looking to get at least what the Big East is getting this time around.

It's not about what you're looking to get. It's about what offers are on the table. ESPN would be pushing it to offer "Same game lineup, but no money", but I fully expect ESPN to offer an extension of the existing contract under mostly the same terms, financially and coverage-wise.

The wild card is Navy. Navy has decent-sized CBS contracts for it's home games, plus the contract for the Army-Navy game. But those contracts are rolling into the AAC contract going forward.

(03-29-2017 08:56 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  The FS1 ratings gap is narrowing and there is a difference between being priority 6 and priority 1. Since more than half the league operates in areas where NBCSN has good brand awareness, playing the short game instead of long game looks foolish. IF THEY HAD A CHOICE.

It's narrowing, but it's not closing any time soon. And NBC Sports doesn't have the list of properties that Fox has boosting FS1.

You're valuing the Comcast Sports Nets, when I don't think conferences are valuing those at all in today's environment. You're recruiting nationally, you want to be on nationally. People look up what channel the game is on, they want the name of the actual channel or network, not "Comcast/Fox Sports Net--check local listings" only to find Fox Sports Ohio is carrying the Cavaliers instead of the Bearcats, sorry.

I think they had a choice. From what was rumored, I don't think NBC guaranteed a minimum on NBC-OTA where as ESPN actually did guarantee ABC slots. I think ABC guarantee was the offset to games on ESPN-U and ESPN-News (networks that would have had lower subscriber numbers than NBC Sports). That's why there was some delay in accepting the offer while Aresco determined if the offer was a match. In the end, he said "it more than matched" the NBC contracted exposure. It certainly offered better exposure than the the old Big East contract they had just completed.