(07-26-2021 11:02 PM)HerdZoned Wrote:  

(07-26-2021 12:06 PM)warhawk09 Wrote:  

(07-25-2021 12:23 PM)HerdZoned Wrote:  B12 schools will stay under the B12 umbrella. They will still have autonomous power until 2025 and the B12 TV contract runs through 2026. No school left out is going to give that up. Aresco and his pretend Power 6 have no play here. As I said on the realignment board yesterday: As Aerosmith sings "Dream On".

Pretty sure all those TV contracts have clauses for when membership changes ... that TV contract won't be anywhere near what it is.

Even the slashed contracts will be bigger than the AAC ESPN contract

Maybe not by a material amount. From an article on TheAthletic today (jacked from one of the posters on the TXST board):

If Texas and Oklahoma do in fact defect to the SEC, the Big 12’s “Left-Behind 8” may be in for a humbling reception as they begin exploring their options. The unfortunate reality is there’s very little difference between the TV interest in Kansas State and West Virginia and the interest for UCF or Houston.

The Big 12 reported $253 million in annual television revenue on its 2019-20 tax return, most of that from a pair of 13-year contracts it signed with ESPN and Fox in 2012. Two sports TV consultants estimated to The Athletic that about 50 percent of those deals’ value was derived solely because of Texas and Oklahoma.
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As co-rights holders, ESPN and Fox hold a draft for each week of the season to determine which games land on which network. They almost always place their top games on over-the-air networks Fox and ABC.

Perhaps the most telling sign of how disproportionately important OU and UT were to those companies is that 33 of the 38 Big 12 games chosen for ABC or Fox — 87 percent — involved one or both of those schools. In 2019, all 11 Oklahoma games covered by the Big 12’s Tier 1 contract were shown over-the-air. Ten of 11 were the year before.

It’s no coincidence, then, that 27 of the conference’s 30 most-viewed regular-season games over those two seasons involved the Sooners and/or the Longhorns, led by the 2019 LSU-Texas game on ABC (8.6 million) and the 2019 Red River Showdown (7.3 million). No. 3 on the list did involve one of the Left-Behind 8, but it also included another national power — the 2018 Ohio State-TCU game in Arlington, Texas, on ABC (7.2 million). You have to scroll through 11 games before finding a game between two of the Left-Behind 8 — West Virginia at Oklahoma State in 2018 on ABC (3.9 million).
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The 22 non-OU/Texas Big 12 home games on ABC, ESPN or ESPN2 over those two seasons averaged 1.37 million viewers. The 49 AAC home games on those same networks averaged 1.01 million viewers. But take away that one mammoth Ohio State-TCU outlier from the Big 12, and its number drops to 1.10 million.

That’s just 90,000 more viewers, on average, than the AAC draws.
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Per its Form 990, the Big 12 distributed an average of $38.5 million to its members in fiscal year 2020. With TV contracts accounting for 62 percent of the conference’s $409 million in total revenue, it can reasonably be estimated that TV accounted for about $24 million of those schools’ distribution checks.

If the aforementioned TV consultants are correct in their estimate that Oklahoma and Texas generated 50 percent of that value, then the Left-Behind 8 would expect to see that number drop to $12 million per school. Even if the other revenue streams remained the same — unlikely, as the league would also produce fewer bowl and NCAA Tournament teams — their overall share would drop to $26.5 million

That’s about half what the Big Ten currently distributes to its members and about 40 percent of what the SEC is projected to reach if Oklahoma and Texas come aboard.

And that $12 million TV figure might prove too optimistic if/when the Big 12 negotiates its next contract. On one hand, sports rights in general have skyrocketed in the nine years since the conference last went to the market. On the other, such a depleted conference does not figure to garner a bidding war between networks, which could dampen the price.

A more useful recent analog, given the viewership numbers cited earlier, might be the AAC’s new ESPN deal that began in 2020. That contract nets its schools about $7 million a year on average.

Unfortunately, that $7 million-to-$12 million range does not bode well for the Left-Behind 8’s chances of landing an invitation to one of the other Power 5 conferences. The ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 are unlikely to invite a school that would drag down its current members’ slice of the conference pie. All three currently make far more than that from media rights.

The more realistic play is for the AAC and Left-Behind 8 to join forces in some capacity. The only question is which league will raid the other. Sources told The Athletic’s Nicole Auerbach that the “Power 6” conference plans to become an aggressor.

Meanwhile, a Big 12 AD lamented to The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman last week that “bringing in a Cincinnati and UCF doesn’t bring any eyeballs.”

Technically, that AD’s not wrong. There’s no evidence to suggest those schools bring in more eyeballs than his. But he may need to come to terms with the reality that his school may soon be held in similar regard.