I posed this question on Twitter Friday...
With the possibility of the 96 team tournament coming to fruition next year, a pair of conferences are in the process of negotiating their media rights for the upcoming season, the ACC and Conference-USA. While the ACC and Conference-USA rights will continue to have a massive gap between the two, could the value of the basketball components change.
There's a general belief that the regular season for a power conference will mean even less and the conference tournament will become a glorified exhibition. In the case of the ACC, they generally have 5-7 NCAA tournament teams and another three in the NIT, so anywhere from 8-10 tournament teams in a 96 team tournament. So if 75% of a conference makes the tournament and are really only playing the regular season for seeding at the end, should a company like Raycom, who owns those rights, offer any increase when the regular season now matters for the teams at the bottom? And in the case of a company like Raycom who then sublicenses games to various entities, can they get a substantial amount of money back?
On the flipside is Conference USA. C-USA has only sent two total teams to the past four NITs. Now that could be due to the auto-bid requirements on the NIT for regular season conference champions, as they sent two teams each to the CBI and CIT tournaments over the past three seasons. Let's say they become a regular 2-3 bid league. Their regular season and conference tournament should have value as the conference doesn't send the majority to the NCAAs. They'll have bubble teams in the upper half of the conference standings. Like this year where Memphis and UAB both lost in the 1st round of the conference tournament, playing well in the conference tournament will matter still for C-USA.
Now lets be clear, football will drive television revenues for both conferences and just because we go to 96 teams doesn't mean that either conference will get a substantial increase in the number of basketball games on national television. C-USA has not yet finished bowl season with a team in either the USA Today or AP polls. The ACC hasn't quite lived up to the expectations that they and the media set for the conference when it expanded. And both conferences have different agendas and the television partners they are negotiating with.
But men's basketball is definitely a driver for these conferences, more so with the ACC and whatever gains it could have in NCAA units from an expanded tournament could offset the possible lack of revenue increases. And as this continues to loom over the NCAA and its member conferences, those conferences with upcoming negotiations will have those same discussions with their rightsholders.
3 comments:
Good post. I agree that the NCAA expansion will hurt the ACC. Perhaps not coincidentially, the Big Ten and SEC recently reupped for long-term television agreements and should be relatively unaffected by this move.
What are your thoughts on how this will affect the Big East. Their performance in this year's tournament aside, I still view them as the premier basketball conference. It is currently a dogfight when you have 16 good teams and only 8-9 would make it to the NCAA. With expansion, it may not be as much.
I think this trickles down to all power six conferences, but as you stated the Big Ten and SEC did get their cash upfront in this case, so their OK.
Haven't heard anything about the Big Ten's MBK games on CBS as that contract did expire but I'd be stunned if that wasn't renewed, unless both sides are waiting to see if the NCAA opts out of the current agreement with CBS for the tournament. Does CBS still have the desire to carry MBK if it doesn't have the tournament? It will have those SEC games, but I'm sure if CBS wanted to get right out, those could get sold off.
Good thoughts on CBS getting out entirely if the tournament goes to ESPN. My guess is that CBS will want to get out, which will free up more games. ESPN would probably take them to the extent they can, which creates several ripple effects:
1. ESPN's inventory is already fairly full so if they take extra SEC games, it would push other conferences off.
2. For the Big Ten, I believe that ESPN is maxed out on the number of games they televise for the Big Ten, which means that extra games will fall to the Big Ten Network, which would only increase its advertising revenue (and overall value for the Big Ten).
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