Big East TV Rights: Where I would go

First, lets remember that ESPN (football and men's basketball) and CBS (men's basketball) holds the rights to the conference until 2013 for both sports, so ESPN is the only one that can make the conference an offer until open bidding is available on the rights, sometime in 2012.  Also remember that the existing contracts are separated by sport, with football separate from men's basketball.

I believe this is going to be a two horse race, if the conference gets to open bidding on its rights and that would be my preference as it worked for the ACC and Pac-12.  ESPN and Comcast would be the two entities.

The 1st item to take care of is the financials.  At a minimum, my goal would be to make sure each football playing member makes $11 million and each basketball school makes $3 million from TV.   Based on my earlier projects of the current deal, that would get the football schools a 2.75x increase in revenue and the basketball schools nearly the same proportional increase.  In total, that would mean that Big East should start their negotiations at $123 million.

Now to stay ESPN and CBS for the packages they currently have, I don't need many changes with men's basketball.  Give me the same amount of games on ESPN/ESPN2 and CBS in both packages.  

• Up the number of regular season games on ESPN/ESPN2 from 49 to 53 to account for TCU's addition
• Of those 53, 45 should be conference games on ESPN/ESPN2
• An increase of one conference games on CBS
• The ability to consider moving the men's basketball tournament back a day for the possibility of the final on ABC in a doubleheader with the SEC final.
• ESPNU remains the same at 30
• No ESPN3.com exclusives

Football is a different story.  I need the following assurances from ESPN to stick around with them:

• ABC picks up eight Big East games per year.  
• One of those must be on Black Friday, another should be the final week of the season.  
• Six of the games must be conference games.  
• One game in primetime per year
• ESPN/ESPN2 takes fifteen games in this fashion
• Three Thursday night games
• Four Friday night games, with at least two of them in doubleheaders with the Pac-12.  One of these games must also be a Black Friday game
• At least one game on the final week of the season
• One game on Sunday or Monday of Labor Day weekend
• At least five games September-November on Saturdays, with one in primetime
• 12 of the 15 games must be conference games
• ESPNU takes three games, less than previous years

If ESPN can do that, I'll stay.  If Comcast is my rightsholder, I want the following:

• NBC
• Seven games
• Three doubleheaders with Notre Dame at a minimum
• Of the seven games, five must be conference games
• One of the games must be on Black Friday as a doubleheader with the NHL's Black Friday game
• NBC windows are exclusive
• Versus
• 20 games
• Three Thursday games
• No Friday games
• Five primetime games
• 17 of the games should be conference games.

Notice that I've done nothing with regional telecasts or with online streaming.  I don't believe a 24/7 network is worthwhile and I don't believe that the conference should pool all of those rights.  In basketball, I would work with ESPN Regional to do a package of 12 regional basketball games and nine football games, but not give them any more games beyond that.  This would be the Game of the Week syndication package.  I would request that ESPN Regional do the following:

• Removal of the SEC regional football package from the New York City market, currently on MSG Network
• Addition of the the Big East regional packages in Houston and San Antonio (if they aren't already), in addition to the Dallas market for TCU

After that, all conference games not selected (7-10 games in football, 40+ games in men's basketball) would revert to the conference to do either a pay-streaming package through BigEast.org and/or syndicate on their own.  Any non-conference games would go to schools to monetize on their own, either via television or the internet.  In the case of football games the regional & conference packages, they cannot air during an over-the-air television window.  Also, if the tournament were to move forward to a Sunday final, the Big East and/or ESPN Regional should take control of at least the syndication of the 1st and 2nd round games, even if some games become internet-only games.

My thought is that though revenue through the conference package is variable based on interest of a game, many schools have media production departments and the overhead to make money on these games should be minimal.  It does put the onus on the conference and member schools to properly market these packages.  This should allow those schools to generate additional revenues that could put them right near the ACC in terms of TV revenues if the conference receives its minimum revenue targets, plus they have the flexibility to sell the conference-owned package at any time to a partner to produce and market if the conference desires to do that.

Since ESPN has been the primary partner of the conference, I think they have the best shot at keeping the Big East rights.  Comcast is there, and they are hungry and would make the conference its showcase for football.  But I believe that the conference has to take control of its own destiny with the games that ESPN Regional currently owns and find ways to create new revenue streams.

Guessing on a C-USA game draft

Because at some point, the C-USA lawsuit will end...

If I were going to guess how the C-USA "game" draft for FOX Sports Media Group and CBS Sports Network were going to go, it might be something like this:

F/X
9/3 UCLA at Houston

FSN
9/1 Miss St. at Memphis*
9/10 Virginia Tech at ECU
9/17 Oklahoma St. at Tulsa
9/24 SMU at Memphis (2)
9/29 Houston at UTEP*
10/8 ECU at Houston (2)
10/15 UCF at SMU (2)
10/20 UCF at UAB*
10/22 SMU at Southern Miss (2)
10/27 Rice at Houston*
10/29 Southern Miss at UTEP (2)
11/5 Southern Miss at ECU (2)
11/10 Houton at Tulane*
11/12 UCF at Southern Miss (2)
11/17 Southern Miss at UAB*
11/19 UCF at ECU (2)
11/25 UTEP at UCF*
11/26 Houston at Tulsa (2)
11/26 ECU at Marshall (2)

CBSSN
9/10 Boston College at UCF
9/10 UTEP at SMU
9/17 Tulane at UAB
9/24 Virginia Tech at Marshall
10/1 North Carolina at ECU
10/8 Mississippi St. at UAB
10/15 UTEP at Tulane (2)
10/15 UCF at SMU
10/22 Marshall at Houston (2)
10/29 SMU at Tulsa
11/3 Tulsa at UCF*
11/5 Southern Miss at ECU
11/12 Navy at SMU (2)
11/26 Memphis at Southern Miss (2)
11/26 Rice at SMU (2)

The games with an asterisk have been slated for TV.  From an exchange I had with the Orlando Sentinel's beat writer, it appears that all Thursday & Friday games, except for the Tulsa-UCF game, will be on FSN.

FOX gets the 1st 10 game selections, then CBS Sports Network takes another 10.  After that FOX gets another ten selections, noted with a (2).  I then gave CBS Sports Network more selections after FOX's final ten to fill out several open time slots based on my earlier blog entry.

Also I'm sticking by the original early season selections, which leaves the Purdue-Rice game without national TV.  Suppose it could be changed out for the UTEP-SMU game.
Here's a breakdown by team
ECU - 7
Houston - 6
Marshall - 3
Memphis - 3
Rice - 1
Southern Miss - 7
SMU - 7
Tulane - 3
Tulsa - 4
UAB - 4
UCF - 8
UTEP - 5

Thoughts?

Big Ten Primetime Schedule

The Big Ten released the rest of its primetime schedule last night.  Here's the entire primetime schedule

9/1 UNLV at Wisconsin (ESPN, 8pm)
9/2 Youngstown St. at Michigan St. (BTN, 7pm)
9/10 Virginia at Indiana (BTN, 7pm)
9/10 Notre Dame at Michigan (ESPN, 8pm)
9/17 Arizona St. at Illinois (BTN, 7pm)
9/24 North Dakota St. at Minnesota (BTN, 7pm)
10/1 Nebraska at Wisconsin (ABC/ESPN/ESPN2, 8pm)
10/1 Notre Dame at Purdue (ABC/ESPN/ESPN2, 8pm)
10/8 Michigan at Northwestern (BTN, 7pm)
10/8 Ohio St. at Nebraska (ABC/ESPN/ESPN2, 8pm)*
10/15 Northwestern at Iowa (BTN, 7pm)
10/22 Penn St. at Northwestern (BTN, 7pm)*
10/22 Wisconsin at Michigan St. (ABC/ESPN/ESPN2, 8pm)*
10/29 Wisconsin at Ohio St. (ABC/ESPN/ESPN2, 8pm)*

*Homecoming

That doesn't include the conference championship game which is expected to air in primetime on FOX. 

One new wrinkle, assuming that the 10/8 and 10/22 games remain on ABC is that they would coexist with a Big Ten Network prime time telecast.  They did coexist once last year on 9/25 when Eastern Michigan at Ohio St. (ABC) and Temple at Penn St. (BTN) coexisted in the 3:30pm time slot.  There was some thought that last year's exception was due to five games in the 12pm slot on BTN and that satellite space was limited.
The BTN and ABC regularly coexist in the final week of schedule when the goal is to try to have two ABC games with Ohio St.-Michigan at noon, then BTN-ABC coexists at 3:30pm.  Last year there were ABC-BTN coexists at both 12pm and 3:30pm in the final week.

Up next for the Big Ten is to finalize their 1st three weeks of the season's kickoff times and TV designations. Homecoming kickoff times are also being finalized.  Four of those games were set as night games.  Here's the rest.

10/1 Northwestern at Illinois
10/15 Indiana at Wisconsin
10/15 Purdue at Penn St.
10/22 Nebraska at Minnesota
10/22 Indiana at Iowa
10/22 Illinois at Purdue
10/29 Northwestern at Indiana
10/29 Purdue at Michigan

Brief addendum when comparing Big East options

This came up in my head when replying to Sean's comments in the previous post and I think it needs to be noted when comparing ESPN to any other possible rightsholder.  And please don't think I'm tipping my hand on Part Three.  I haven't written it yet and I'm still drawing out what to do.

There's an ESPN, and there's an ESPN2.  Two channels.

There isn't a Versus 2 (yet), FSN or F/X 2 (though they could be considered tandem networks), CBS College Sports 2.  TNT, TruTV and TBS sometimes act in tandem, but the networks have clear branding and entertainment purposes.

So when we say 64 basketball games over two networks (94 over three if you want to add in ESPNU numbers), that doesn't always translate to being able to provide 64 games over one network.  There's only 24 hours in a day and only so many time slots available.  Particularly when basketball is a sport that is played over virtually every night of the week.

Its easier to do with football.  Even though the timeslot is larger by, on average, 1.5 hours, there's only one game a week per team.  Networks have open time on the weekends.  More flexibility.

Timeslot and location matters too.  FSN can do 46 regular season Pac-10 basketball games today (it will be less starting in 2012-13) because they televise one game later on Thursday, then 1-2 on the weekend.   They are outside of pro sports windows for the majority of the NHL and NBA cities.  They schedule well too by doing Thursdays when the NBA has their exclusive TNT window.
Just food for thought.

Big East TV Rights: Where do we go? -- Part Two

Part One explored where the Big East is currently at with respect to TV rights, specifically with finances, exposure and content ownership.

Right now the Big East has the following from ESPN and CBS

Football

• 17 games, minimum, on ABC/ESPN/ESPN2 (ABC is supposed to carry three games per year)
• At least five games on ESPNU
• Regional syndication and ESPN3.com exclusives are available for ESPN to take advantage of, though the regional package is no longer the most widely syndicated package by ESPN Regional.  That belongs to the SEC.
• In terms of game dates, one can be on Wednesday, up to two games on Sundays, four on Thursdays.
  

Basketball

• 64 games per year on ESPN/ESPN2 (49 regular season games, plus conference tournament)
• Of the regular season games, 41 must be conference games
• CBS will carry five conference games
• ESPN Regional/Big East Network must carry 66 conference games and 22 non-conference games
• ESPNU and ESPN3 can carry 30 games combined

Lets now look at the various options out there and what they bring to the table:

* ESPN - The safe choice right now. ESPN treats the conference very well with respect to basketball. I'm not sure I'd change any coverage aspects here. They also handle the regional basketball package and it allows the conference to be hands off, for the most part, when it comes to TV. Whether that is a good thing or not is for another article.

From my standpoint on football, ESPN doesn't do as well when compared to other AQ conferences with the number of telecasts on weeknights, though late week football is becoming more reasonable to other AQ conferences. ABC coverage is minimal compared to the other AQ conferences on ABC, but as the Pac-12 is now proving over the past two years, a presence on over-the-air TV isn't as important as national coverage.

One place where ESPN really excels is the digital area.  ESPN3's coverage has grown by leaps and bounds and with the addition of apps for tablets and cell phones, it is a leader.

The only other debatable item if the conference were to stay with ESPN is whether they would want to bid on the CBS package of basketball games. My guess is they would since those games could easily be worked in to the schedule.

* FOX Sports Media Group - I don't see them being involved. With the amount of content they bought for the Big 12 and Pac-12, along with their C-USA content and vast regional sports coverage at both the college and pro levels, I don't find them appealing to the conference at this point and I don't see FOX having the space to provide them adequate coverage on any level.

* CBS & CBS Sports Network - I have no doubt that CBS would love to retain their presence as the over-the-air carrier for the conference's regular season basketball coverage. CBS was the primary carrier of the conference's football package until 2001 and it doesn't feel like they've desired to bring the conference back, though the conference's football membership was quite different and on some levels more nationally relevant.

Does CBS have the room to provide some football coverage at 12pm? Sure. Does it want to? Probably another story. As for CBS Sports Network, it would love the cache of having an AQ conference, but with long term contracts tied up in the two eastern services academies, Conference USA and the MWC, they don't have the room on the football side either. Basketball they would love to take though, but with the network trying to shed its collegiate nature, they may wish to spend money elsewhere.

On a regional level, CBS Sports Network has handled the Atlantic 10's basketball syndication package. In terms of production, what I have seen from the network is a solid improvement over several years. The only downside is that the games are seen on fewer regional sports network affiliates that when the A-10 controlled the package themselves.

CBS does show their SEC football, along with basketball games its owns, through CBSSports.com.  They have have the digital assets from CBS Sports Network to provide online viewing, but some of the CBS Sports Network collegiate programming is left to the schools to provide and produce.

* Comcast/NBC - The big spender in the Pac-12 rights race until ESPN and FOX paired up, Comcast might be the best option to drive up the price. While they have the room on Saturdays for football on Versus (soon to be renamed....something else) and could provide a presence on NBC, the increase in the NHL package is a detriment to the conference. Since the NHL and college basketball seasons run concurrent, and Versus has favored carrying eastern and central time zone teams' home games, Versus doesn't necessarily have the room to showcase Big East basketball at night. On the weekends? Yes.

Comcast does have a strength in its regional networks and the areas they cover with respect to the location of many Big East schools. But several of them also have pro sports agreements and it could be tough to crack those lineups too.

NBC does provide for their Notre Dame football games to be streamed online via NBCSports.com, but coverage on Versus has not been made available through the internet.

* Turner - The wildcard. Since they don't have an over the air network component, not to mention that their networks are general entertainment and not 24/7 sports, they don't seem suited to taking on a full package in basketball. Maybe a weekend package with another network with a single dedicated weeknight to the conference (see the NBA on TNT). But they do want some college basketball content to compliment their NCAA Tournament coverage and they've spoken about trying to raise the visibility of TruTV, which is more based in reality show types of programming. 

In football, they have the room, more likely for a game or two on the weekend. Again, the general entertainment nature of their networks don't seem to mesh with the ability to do 3-4 Thursday night football games.

Turner doesn't have any regional networks to speak of. They are part of the larger Time Warner system, which has a stake in the CW, but no one has pushed making sports a part of that network on a national basis.

Turner does have a decent portfolio of online content management with the NBA, NASCAR and the NCAA.  Turner began managing NCAA March Madness On Demand this past tournament and incorporated several social networking functions and added tablet/mobile apps.

______________________________

In Part Three, I'll go over what I would do with respect to a proper rights fee target, coverage levels and what to do with third-tier rights.

Big East TV Rights: Where do we go? -- Part One

EDIT: An incorrect rights fee was used below.  Along with some really bad math on my part.  I have used strikethrough where appropriate to acknowledge my changes.

Note: In interest of disclosure, I'm a Syracuse fan.  Not a graduate of the university, but a fan.  Better to get that out up front.

With five of the AQ conferences locked up for at least the next five years, its time to look at the Big East.  Right now they are the lowest paid conference on a per school basis in football, and the hybrid nature of their conference forces them to sign separate deals governing TV for football and men's basketball, instead of all-encompassing deals.

Football drives the majority of the conference TV deals these days.  Unfortunately for the Big East, its not their strength.  While the conference does regularly finish in the top six when ranking conferences using various statistical and computer models, it has several subjective and objective measures working against it.  In football it is the AQ conference that provides the lowest number of conference games (28, in 2012 that increases to 36 with the addition of TCU but is still lowest) and is the only conference not tied to a BCS bowl game.  And in the eyes of the media, fair or not, it is considered the weakest conference of the six and routinely suggested for demotion in favor of the MWC or whomever catches the eye of the media.

Basketball is a vastly different story.  At 16 teams, it delivers a ton of value to TV partners with 18 conferences games per team (I believe the number is 144 conference games) and provides several quality OOC games.  They delivered a high water mark of 11 teams into the NCAA tournament this year and while several teams were upset early, the conference does house the national champion in UConn (UConn's worthiness based on NCAA violations is another story for another time, and its been debated thoroughly through the media already).

Sports Business Daily provided a pair of great articles recently on rights negotiations.  The 1st dealt with ESPN floating an offer to the conference for all existing rights the network has for a high water mark of $130 million.  I'm told this is an offer for both football and basketball and not just towards one sport or the other.  The 2nd article was on the Pac-12 negotiations and how FOX & ESPN were able to hold off Comcast, who was a strong bidder for Pac-12 rights.

With ESPN offering this extension at a time while the Big East is still under contract, it is testing the conference to see if it will hold off and allow its rights to go through the open market and how much it values its relationship with ESPN.

There's a few key issues for the conference to consider too:

1. Financial - The football conference members make around $2 $3.47 million per year from ESPN (this does not include any additional money from CBS, who pays the conference around $9 million on a per year basis for just basketball).  I assumed that the ESPN money is divided up where 2/3 of the money is divided up among the football members ($13.3m $22.2m out of $20m $33.3m), then the rest is divided among all 16 members equally.  When coupled with the CBS money, its around $5.3 $4 million for the football playing members, $3.7 $1.25 million for those not playing football in conference.  While that is a great number for the non-football members, the "all sports" members number is around 41% 33% of the revenue that the new ESPN contract will generate for the ACC.
2. Exposure - The football members now have a interesting view in to the future with the Pac-12.  The current contract allows for Big East games to be played Wednesday-Sunday.  With the exception of the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, ESPN has not televised a Sunday night Big East game since 2008 (UConn @ USF, 11/23/08).  But Thursdays and Fridays, particularly Fridays, have become a Big East staple with at least four Big East telecasts on Fridays nights, excluding Black Fridays.  Now that the Big East isn't the only AQ conference playing on Fridays and that their Thursday night appearances have slightly decreased, is ESPN still the place to be?  For Saturday games, the appearances on ABC are minimal and many times are not conference games.  ESPN/ESPN2 in-season appearances are rare with the exception of late in the season. 
   
   On the basketball side, things couldn't be better.  Big Monday is the flagship night and due to the flexible nature of scheduling with the conference and the arenas that they play in, Big East basketball can be seen nearly every day of the week on ESPN/ESPN2.  ESPNU typically has 2-3 conference games each week and the syndication games are easy to find.  The conference tournament is televised nationally and up until the 13th-16th place teams' additions into the tournament, was touted as the only tournament to be exclusively televised on the main ESPN channel.  The championship holds the key 9pm ET slot on Saturday of Championship Week and gets a full one hour preview, so it can be inferred that ESPN treats this game as their crown jewel, even with the ACC & SEC games the next day.
   
   On the CBS side, the games are usually national and CBS & ESPN often work with the conference to pick the best matchups for TV and are involved in who are the "mirror" opponents for a given season (which teams will play home-home).
3. Content ownership and visibility - Over each of the past five AQ conference negotiations, there have been various types of use of third tier content.  This is content that the major networks typically don't want and conferences have found ways to monetize that content, in addition to content aired nationally.
   
   * ACC - All content now owned by ESPN, but a greater amount of sublicensing to Raycom for airing on regional cable and over-the-air networks (two separate packages).
   * Big Ten - Big Ten Network. 51% owned by the conference, 49% owned by FOX Sports Media Group
   * Big 12 - FOX Sports Media Group purchased more football games than ever for national cable telecasts, but now schools will have one football game per year that they can sell independently on a regional basis.  Basketball has had the ability to do 3rd tier packages of games.
   * Pac-12 - Pac-12 Media Enterprises, which will have both digital and television components to it owned by the conference 100%.
   * SEC - a mix of the ACC and Big 12 where there will be ESPN owned regional content, sublicensed content to regional cable networks, plus the ability to take football/basketball to regional partners.  In addition, the SEC is able to stream freely or sell digital copies of its games because it owns the copyright to its games.
   
   The Big East today is close to the ACC's model, without the sublicensing of regional content to Raycom.  ESPN takes care of production and finding outlets for the games to air.  The conference receives no additional rights fees; it is part of the existing deal with ESPN.
   
   Another pair of item to consider is ESPNU and ESPN3.com.  When the Big East negotiated their deals, ESPNU and ESPN3.com weren't in nearly as many homes as today.  ESPNU wasn't on many highly viewed tiers but Time Warner, DirecTV and Comcast has all placed it on a highly viewed digital tier (in some places, it swapped spots with ESPN Classic).  ESPN3, back then known as ESPN360, had limited reach, but with Time Warner signing on last year, the online channel has the ability to reach at least 60 million homes.

So where should the conference go?  Renegotiate with ESPN?  Hold out and see what suitors are in the market in a couple years?  My next entry will discuss the options.

Last attempt at early selections

The remainder of early season selections are going to come out over the next few weeks.  I decided to do them on a conference basis.  I believe I didn't choose a network for the same timeslot twice.  I'm sure there's going to be some MLB conflicts in time slots, so FSN/CSN will have to work through those.

Take a look.  Feel free to comment.

Spring meetings are often when these announcements appear as TV partners are often in attendance to give details about coverage for the upcoming season.  The Pac-12 has already held theirs so expect FOX Sports and Versus announcements right around June 1st.  The rest:

Big 12: Not sure
Big East: May 23-25
Big Ten: May 17-18 (could be when you see Big Ten Network night game announcement)
SEC: Early June, with ESPNU and regional selections possibly as late as football media days in July