Post by elp525 on Jun 22, 2011 5:14:01 GMT -5
Wednesday June 22, 2011
by Jack Bogaczyk
Charleston Daily Mail
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- It's not apples and oranges. It's more like grapefruits and lemons.
It's the sizable disparity in annual revenue sharing between the haves and comparatively have-nots among the six Bowl Championship Series conferences.
It's why the Big East made a smart move in delaying a decision on its next telecast contract, because that's where the revenue stream flows. And with multiple bidders possible and probable - see the recent 12-year, $3 billion Pac-12 deal shared by rivals ESPN and Fox - the Big East has a chance to play catch-up.
First, consider some numbers:
The Southeastern Conference recently announced that the average distribution to its 12 members in 2010-11 was $18.3 million. That figure includes TV, bowls, the SEC football title game, SEC basketball tournament and NCAA Tournament distributions.
Meanwhile, West Virginia's revenue sharing amount from the Big East for the fiscal year that ends next week is $7.049 million - and the Mountaineers have the No. 2 figure in the league behind Connecticut, which achieved its first BCS date and an NCAA Final Four title and likely received more than $8.5 million.
(A year ago, after a men's Final Four berth that the Big East rewards with $1 million, West Virginia's conference revenue piece of the pie was $7.964 million.)
Just for comparison, the average SEC school was getting almost exactly what WVU received last year as long ago as 2002. Now, the average SEC team gets about 2 1/2 times what the top Big East performers receive - and the latter conference is supposed to compete in that arena?
And that doesn't even factor in some of the lucrative individual school deals by some SEC members, or the fact that the SEC has eight stadiums that seat more than 75,000, while the Big East's largest football homes are in the 65,000-range.
In the arms race, it's missles against muskets ... and a conference considering Army and Navy as expansion candidates and those Mountaineers who follow the nationally prominent WVU rifle program know what I mean.
It's been reported that the Big East could have re-upped and extended with ESPN, which has the league's primary football and basketball contracts through 2013. The new deal, sources say, would have increased dollar signs in the three years left on the deal, then added nine more years at $1 billion.
The eight Big East football schools (nine starting in 2012-13 when TCU moves in) were said to get $11 million annually in such an extension, with the basketball members about half of that figure. The conference thinkers backed away, however.
As one recently said, "We have the best college basketball on the planet. We're coming out of the worst football season (in the Big East's 20-year football history), so that's not a position of strength. We would have still been getting about $2 million less (for football schools) than the ACC (per school). We'd still have been sixth of six (BCS leagues) in TV revenue."
The SEC was in the second year of its 15-year deals with ESPN and CBS that will average $205 million annually.
The Big East's annual TV deal average is $36 million ($13 million for football) with ESPN, and another $4 million (approximate) with CBS for basketball.
The Big East isn't going to get SEC dollars. It can get better than ACC and Big 12 dollars, however, because of timing and increased network competition.
Recent negotiations by the ACC, Big 12 and Pac-12 were driven by competition. ESPN is no longer the only game in town. Fox wants inventory for its national and regional networks. Comcast, which owns NBC now, hopes to make Versus (soon to be renamed with an NBC branding) a college sports player, too.
Another factor that bodes well for the Big East is the recent bidding for four Olympics from 2014-20. It's not that the Big East is going to get Olympic-sized bucks at all, but the fact that Comcast - minus the presence of longtime Olympics telecast guru Dick Ebersol - ponied up to keep the Games on NBC after similarly stout bids by Fox and ESPN/ABC.
The timing couldn't be better for the Big East, if it can figure who and what it wants in expansion and exposure.
ESPN has an exclusive window to come back to the Big East (September-October 2012). The conference can stay with its longtime partner for bigger bucks then, or throw open the bidding for multi-layered and multi-network arrangements after that.
When former Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese did the current ESPN deal in the summer of 2006, the conference had just gone through the exits of Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College. It had a very, very uncertain football future.
It had even greater promise in hoops with some of the additions (Louisville, Cincinnati, Marquette), but it hadn't expanded the intraleague schedule from 16 to 18 games per team.
And in the last four NCAA Tournaments, the Big East has placed 8, 7, 8 and 11 of its 16 teams in the big bracket. That's what the league has to sell now, in addition to its major market presence in the East (and to a lesser extent the Midwest), TCU's arrival and more expansion in the next 14 months (to provide more football TV inventory).
Television and NCAA basketball units are where the Big East has to make up ground on its BCS peers. The Big East's 2010-11 bowl revenue (six games) was a BCS conference-low of $24.787 million (of which $22.515 million was from the BCS). The only other league within $6 million of that was then then-Pac-10, at $27.258 million.
The bottom line? The Big East has to make a network or two dig really deep next year if it seriously wants to stay in the ballpark with its BCS brethren.
by Jack Bogaczyk
Charleston Daily Mail
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- It's not apples and oranges. It's more like grapefruits and lemons.
It's the sizable disparity in annual revenue sharing between the haves and comparatively have-nots among the six Bowl Championship Series conferences.
It's why the Big East made a smart move in delaying a decision on its next telecast contract, because that's where the revenue stream flows. And with multiple bidders possible and probable - see the recent 12-year, $3 billion Pac-12 deal shared by rivals ESPN and Fox - the Big East has a chance to play catch-up.
First, consider some numbers:
The Southeastern Conference recently announced that the average distribution to its 12 members in 2010-11 was $18.3 million. That figure includes TV, bowls, the SEC football title game, SEC basketball tournament and NCAA Tournament distributions.
Meanwhile, West Virginia's revenue sharing amount from the Big East for the fiscal year that ends next week is $7.049 million - and the Mountaineers have the No. 2 figure in the league behind Connecticut, which achieved its first BCS date and an NCAA Final Four title and likely received more than $8.5 million.
(A year ago, after a men's Final Four berth that the Big East rewards with $1 million, West Virginia's conference revenue piece of the pie was $7.964 million.)
Just for comparison, the average SEC school was getting almost exactly what WVU received last year as long ago as 2002. Now, the average SEC team gets about 2 1/2 times what the top Big East performers receive - and the latter conference is supposed to compete in that arena?
And that doesn't even factor in some of the lucrative individual school deals by some SEC members, or the fact that the SEC has eight stadiums that seat more than 75,000, while the Big East's largest football homes are in the 65,000-range.
In the arms race, it's missles against muskets ... and a conference considering Army and Navy as expansion candidates and those Mountaineers who follow the nationally prominent WVU rifle program know what I mean.
It's been reported that the Big East could have re-upped and extended with ESPN, which has the league's primary football and basketball contracts through 2013. The new deal, sources say, would have increased dollar signs in the three years left on the deal, then added nine more years at $1 billion.
The eight Big East football schools (nine starting in 2012-13 when TCU moves in) were said to get $11 million annually in such an extension, with the basketball members about half of that figure. The conference thinkers backed away, however.
As one recently said, "We have the best college basketball on the planet. We're coming out of the worst football season (in the Big East's 20-year football history), so that's not a position of strength. We would have still been getting about $2 million less (for football schools) than the ACC (per school). We'd still have been sixth of six (BCS leagues) in TV revenue."
The SEC was in the second year of its 15-year deals with ESPN and CBS that will average $205 million annually.
The Big East's annual TV deal average is $36 million ($13 million for football) with ESPN, and another $4 million (approximate) with CBS for basketball.
The Big East isn't going to get SEC dollars. It can get better than ACC and Big 12 dollars, however, because of timing and increased network competition.
Recent negotiations by the ACC, Big 12 and Pac-12 were driven by competition. ESPN is no longer the only game in town. Fox wants inventory for its national and regional networks. Comcast, which owns NBC now, hopes to make Versus (soon to be renamed with an NBC branding) a college sports player, too.
Another factor that bodes well for the Big East is the recent bidding for four Olympics from 2014-20. It's not that the Big East is going to get Olympic-sized bucks at all, but the fact that Comcast - minus the presence of longtime Olympics telecast guru Dick Ebersol - ponied up to keep the Games on NBC after similarly stout bids by Fox and ESPN/ABC.
The timing couldn't be better for the Big East, if it can figure who and what it wants in expansion and exposure.
ESPN has an exclusive window to come back to the Big East (September-October 2012). The conference can stay with its longtime partner for bigger bucks then, or throw open the bidding for multi-layered and multi-network arrangements after that.
When former Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese did the current ESPN deal in the summer of 2006, the conference had just gone through the exits of Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College. It had a very, very uncertain football future.
It had even greater promise in hoops with some of the additions (Louisville, Cincinnati, Marquette), but it hadn't expanded the intraleague schedule from 16 to 18 games per team.
And in the last four NCAA Tournaments, the Big East has placed 8, 7, 8 and 11 of its 16 teams in the big bracket. That's what the league has to sell now, in addition to its major market presence in the East (and to a lesser extent the Midwest), TCU's arrival and more expansion in the next 14 months (to provide more football TV inventory).
Television and NCAA basketball units are where the Big East has to make up ground on its BCS peers. The Big East's 2010-11 bowl revenue (six games) was a BCS conference-low of $24.787 million (of which $22.515 million was from the BCS). The only other league within $6 million of that was then then-Pac-10, at $27.258 million.
The bottom line? The Big East has to make a network or two dig really deep next year if it seriously wants to stay in the ballpark with its BCS brethren.
