(05-18-2017 06:48 PM)Wolfman Wrote: (05-18-2017 02:53 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote: (05-18-2017 02:07 PM)Wolfman Wrote: Let's not forget that Oklahoma, Kansas, and possibly others, have tier-3 network deals. They don't pay as much as the LHN but they are still factors.
They aren't factors at all. Every school in the ACC has their own "tier 3" rights deals. It's things that companies like IMG usually are contracted to manage. The LHN is not really "tier 3", more like shared "tier 2" if you have to employ "tier" terminology.
No ACC school has retained any broadcast rights. They do have digital rights (the IMG stuff you are referring to). Those are not tier 3.
The B12 media partners have the rights to any game broadcast nationally (tier 1) or regionally (tier 2). If nobody picks up the game for tier 1 or tier 2 broadcast, the rights revert back to the school (tier 3). No ACC school has this option.
Oklahoma has a broadcast (not digital/ad) contract with Fox just like Texas has a contract with ESPN. Kansas and WVU also have tier 3 broadcast deals.
Is Oklahoma going to give up a guaranteed $7 million payout for a share of the P12 network that isn't paying out any money? Would they give that up for an ACCN payout of $5 million?
They are a factor.
First off, the whole "tier" narrative, suggested as left over broadcast rights for typically 1 football game, a handful of nonconference basketball cupcakes, and olympic sports... is completely misunderstood and parroted as some sort of significant financial windfall is purely kook garbage made popular by know-nothing bloggers like the Dude.
These rights deals, and they're always managed by outside firms, almost always include EVERYTHING else and are seldom separated out, including corporate sponsorships, venue ad placement, web, streaming, radio, naming rights, left over video broadcasts, coaching shows...all of it. It varies by school, but it is almost always all of it.
Many schools have lost money trying to monetize left over broadcast rights that you refer to as "Tier 3", including trying set up pay per view events. Why? The lack of actual interest in these events and their production costs, the later of which are always left out of the equation when these deals are discussed. Oklahoma is one of the very few that was able to monetize what is left over...or I should more accurate say, Learfield Sports was able to monetize it because they brokered the deal with Fox since they owned all the rights and they have also extended or rolled part of their corporate sponsorship packages, advertising rights, streaming, web, and coaches shows into the deal. And what the Fox regional is actually paying OU for the sports and shows is actually less than $6 million (average over life of contract). What you don't know is OU's annual production costs, which is known to involve several millions in equipment, but more significantly, around 100 employees that were hired by the university (you know how much these employees are likely to cost, especially full time employees with full benefits packages?...however they might actually expense that on the books, they are still lucky to make much more than a million or two). Production costs are the thing actually killing the Pac Network's profitability along with their inability to get national distribution which these regional Fox deals don't have either. So what you are comparing is payout to OU post-start-up and pre-production not included along other things mixed in vs Pac payout post-production with start up costs still being subtracted and with the Pac network taking on some of the studio production costs (just like the SEC and ACC Networks will be split between on location school productions for live events and studio production in ESPN's Charlotte studios).
Whatever their actual net is from this, and we will never really know, almost no other schools are making anything more than squat off that left over broadcast stuff...what they make...if you could parse it out...is a drop in the bucket of their overall rights package (and OU is actually one of Learfield's largest properties, a school like WVU is not). A benefit that is just as big as any money, if not bigger, is the exposure of getting the content on the air. Schools do make money off the total left over rights package, which include things like sponsorships, just like ACC schools do. None of this left over regional broadcast stuff, not for OU or anyone else...would influence whether any school joins a conference like the Pac...not that the Pac hasn't already showed it doesn't want OU without UT.
