(04-02-2018 06:21 AM)murrdcu Wrote:  

(03-31-2018 11:34 PM)JRsec Wrote:  A synopsis post about the likely options regarding the Big 12:

From a Network perspective:

There's a good chance that ESPN will use their advantageous position to push for the 10 schools of the Big 12 to merge with the ACC and SEC. Why? It would cost them between 700 to 800 million to move those 10 schools to those two conferences and elevate the ACC's payouts to 50 million and the SEC's to 55 million. That's 4% of the NET Worth of ESPN.

So far Amazon has been pushing for pro sports probably because pro sports produce their own product. Amazon doesn't have the kind of production presence to be able to easily go to college venues around the nation and create product. And, the schools would need some lead time to be able to get ready to prepare their own. So far there is no indication that Amazon will pursue college sports. But if you are ESPN why take a chance?

If you are ESPN you know you have roughly 45% of the BTN product now and that you have 100% of the ACC product until 2036 and all of the SEC product but 1 game a week until 2034. By acquiring the Big 12, even at that expense you can boost the payouts of the two conferences you own the highest % of a stake in, renegotiate the current contracts with a 10 year extension into the 2040's and lock down 40 of the top 65 schools early and well before Amazon could make a legitimate move for it. That gives you virtually 2 decades in which to prepare for the changing markets and adapt. 4% is a small stake in the future. With 45% of the Big 10 product you don't need the rest of it to gain some of the key games out of the Big 10. And if the PAC sells out completely to FOX or Amazon they don't compete with your time zones that well.

FOX will make a push to acquire key members of the Big 12 for their investment in the Big 10. But the Big 10 can really only take 3 of the current Big 12 and FOX would find it impossible to place the other 7 prior to the expiration of the GOR whereas ESPN can move all 10 and dissolve the Big 12. So that's a nice angle to play if you are ESPN. There's precious little time remaining on the Big 12's T3 rights and with UT's in hand along with KU's, all that ESPN need worry about is OU's which they in part acquire when their purchase of FOX's RSN's goes through. The buyout on the rest would be very affordable and I have factored it into the 700-800 million figure already.

Setting up 2 twenty member conferences in the ACC and SEC would allow for conference semi final games and would lock down the top and third best viewing regions and tie them to the largest market footprint for the linear networks. it would also encapsulate the lion's share of major rivalries for the Big 12/ACC/&SEC.

The PAC is ill positioned to do much about it. Their payouts are low and they would probably have to sell out their PACN in order to attract the kind of money they would need to make a big push for the Big 12 product.

In the past the Big 12 has been interested in a merger, but with the SEC, not the PAC.

Ten schools is too many for the SEC to absorb profitably. But 6 would be easier especially if the Mouse makes it worth our while. For the ACC 4 current Big 12 schools and another friend of Texas would get it done. The Horns would have their own division and regional play for minor sports, especially if minor sports boundaries and schedules are blurred with those of the SEC.

And again the PAC likely couldn't afford to offer all 10 schools and certainly would be apprehensive about taking some of those Big 12 schools that lag academically or have their undergraduate work under a Church's oversight (Baylor).

So in spite of conventional internet logic (or lack thereof) the real driving force, if we even have further realignment, will come from the networks dangling cash. Therefore I like the chances of the this kind of move coming to fruition and if it does it will happen long before 2024-5. And there's only 1 network who could pull it off.

The only question in my mind is whether one of the following scenarios preempts this opportunity:

1. The court rules to allow for larger stipends and some smaller privates back out creating a much different realignment environment than we currently envision.

2. ESPN decides it wants the Big 12 but doesn't want to pay them that much more so they dangle a smaller raise and get them to sign a more exclusive ESPN contract that allows ESPN to roll the LHN into a Big 12N and they extend the GOR and ESPN holds 3 conferences and there is no movement between them.

3. ESPN makes a play to own a much larger share of the Big 10 and they still pay to place all 10 Big 12 schools only the division includes the Big 10 now. But there would have to be some compromise. Everyone would get a prize, but nobody would get 2.

I would say what the conferences would prefer but most everybody has a good idea about that. The point here is the conferences will continue to take those the networks offer the most for them to accept. FOX and ESPN could be in opposition, but I'm more inclined to think that it would be cheaper for them if they gave each other a wink and worked out a profitable solution.

Time will tell. If I'm wrong nothing will happen in the next couple of years. If I'm right things could well bust wide open. Only this time there won't be any talk precipitating the moves. They'll be no news at all, and then surprisingly one day an announcement and things will be all over and done before the competition can get involved.

I don’t understand the need to place 10 Big 12 schools when there are really 4 brands that are worth paying for: Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas Basketball, and West Virginia.

If you take OU and say OSU out of the Big 12, that Conference could remain as an eight team conference and just add more big non-conference matches. That would provide the best bang for the buck for the remaining Big 12 members unless the networks don’t value that inventory as much and refuse to over pay for nonexistent members as they are now.

If the Big 12 is going that expand, it’ll be from the poorest P5 conference, the PAC, as the networks did not think any of the current G5 candidates add value to the B12 when Boren did his famous interviews and presentations

The timeline is why you place all 10. You have to in order to be able to move earlier than the expiration of the Big 12's GOR. The GOR can be voided with 8 votes. The other two could then sue and tie up the deal for a few years. If you have to take 8 it's not that big of an expense to take all 10.

Having 2 or more Texas schools in each of the ACC and SEC simply gives ESPN what they've sought in every other state, a monopoly of all of the major schools, without allowing a conference to hold them all. They were unable to crack N.C. State and Va. Tech loose from the ACC in 2010 which would have split those states between the SEC and ACC, and they won't be able to do that to the Mississippi and Alabama schools because of the strength of the SEC and the historical associations. But they've managed to it pretty much everywhere else.

Remember that ESPN holds the rights to every school of any size South of Virginia/Kentucky/&Missouri except for the Big 12 schools where through the SEC and AAC they hold Tulsa, SMU, Houston, Texas A&M, Missouri, and Arkansas. If they land the Big 12 schools they own all of Texas. That's 29 million sets of eyes, potentially, x the number of Texas P5 schools (5) and AAC schools (2) every weekend. Toss in the Oklahoma pair to add to Tulsa and that region becomes 34 million plus x 10 in the most lucrative regional sports market in the U.S.

The point here Murrdcu is that if you want to watch the Texas and Oklahoma schools play, any of them play, you'd have to buy an ESPN app or subscription. That's massive in terms of market advantage.

The damned market model was the carrot used by ESPN to break up, or keep conferences from, owning an entire state's product because that gives the conference leverage. But ESPN has through the ACC or SEC with the AAC tossed in, owned every product of value within every state south of that Virginia to Missouri line I stated. That's the #1 footprint and the #1 and #3 highest viewer saturated regions for college sports viewing if the Big 12 is added to it. And it's not like Iowa State doesn't hold value for ESPN. If they have to accommodate I.S.U., K.S.U. and Kansas, those still give ESPN entrance into Chicago and other Midwestern cities and compliments what Notre Dame does for them.

When the Big 10 initially tried to shut ESPN out over a contract dispute ESPN began to find alternate ways to get into the markets of those Northern cities. So Boston, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, were additions for Northeastern markets and Louisville, Cincinnati through the AAC, Philadelphia through Temple, and Notre Dame for Cincinnati, Indianapolis, part of Eastern Michigan, Chicago, and Detroit gave ESPN a way to advertise in the Big 10 markets without having a Big 10 school.

Now simply owning 45% of the Big 10's rights helps them to accomplish these goals.

So the cost of placing all 10 of their schools has value not to our conferences but to ESPN because of the market control it gives them. Therefore if they are willing to pay the ACC and SEC to take them, why should we refuse if it profits us to do so?