AAC, ESPN Agree To 12-Year Media-Rights Deal Worth $1B

[redmen9194]

It will hurt them recruiting wise. So you have a kid that is getting recruited by a bunch of schools. Let's say Marquette, West Virginia, Clemson and UConn. I would assume as part of the process, the recruit will look to watch a few games. So the recruit will find every Marquette game on the Fox networks and West Virginia and Clemson will be on the ESPN family of channels. But what about UConn? That recruit is not going to find them on regular TV and then will figure out that they are on a pay wall streaming site. I don't care what the future of TV is or may be - but if a kid's family can turn on the TV and see that kid's game it's a lot different than paying for a streaming service with just a couple million subscribers. It's a bad deal. It's not even close to the amount of money to compete with the Power Five in football, it decreases their exposure in both football and basketball by not having all or most of their games on TV, and for programs like Cincy and UConn that have been established that's a killer.

[stever20]

It will hurt them recruiting wise. So you have a kid that is getting recruited by a bunch of schools. Let's say Marquette, West Virginia, Clemson and UConn. I would assume as part of the process, the recruit will look to watch a few games. So the recruit will find every Marquette game on the Fox networks and West Virginia and Clemson will be on the ESPN family of channels. But what about UConn? That recruit is not going to find them on regular TV and then will figure out that they are on a pay wall streaming site. I don't care what the future of TV is or may be - but if a kid's family can turn on the TV and see that kid's game it's a lot different than paying for a streaming service with just a couple million subscribers. It's a bad deal. It's not even close to the amount of money to compete with the Power Five in football, it decreases their exposure in both football and basketball by not having all or most of their games on TV, and for programs like Cincy and UConn that have been established that's a killer.

Except that it's really not. The linear exposure is pretty much EXACTLY what they've been getting(and up from what they were required to get).

Football
A minimum of 40 regular-season telecasts per season on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU, including at least 20 across ABC, ESPN and ESPN2, which represents increased annual exposure across those ESPN networks.
A similar number of Thursday and Friday contests.
The American Championship game will be televised each year on ABC or ESPN.
New to ESPN's TV rights beginning in 2020-21 are all Navy-controlled football games versus Notre Dame, plus first pick of the remaining Navy-controlled football games each year (excluding any games versus Army and Air Force). Beyond select Navy football games and select men's basketball games, all conference controlled football and men's basketball games from The American will air on an ESPN network or ESPN . All women's basketball controlled games will also be carried across ESPN's platforms.

Men's Basketball A minimum of 65 regular-season games per season on ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU, with at least 25 on ESPN or ESPN2.
Complete annual coverage of the conference tournament across ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU, including the championship game on ESPN.

The exposure they were getting this year was definitely enough. I mean sure some dreg OOC games might not be on, but big deal there...... Folks here want to act like everything is going to be ESPN+, and that's just not the case at all...

Also, there's some talk that there may very well be a CBSSN sub license involved as well(and if ESPN gets the Big East sub license- you better believe they will be pushing for that hard).

[Xudash]

It will hurt them recruiting wise. So you have a kid that is getting recruited by a bunch of schools. Let's say Marquette, West Virginia, Clemson and UConn. I would assume as part of the process, the recruit will look to watch a few games. So the recruit will find every Marquette game on the Fox networks and West Virginia and Clemson will be on the ESPN family of channels. But what about UConn? That recruit is not going to find them on regular TV and then will figure out that they are on a pay wall streaming site. I don't care what the future of TV is or may be - but if a kid's family can turn on the TV and see that kid's game it's a lot different than paying for a streaming service with just a couple million subscribers. It's a bad deal. It's not even close to the amount of money to compete with the Power Five in football, it decreases their exposure in both football and basketball by not having all or most of their games on TV, and for programs like Cincy and UConn that have been established that's a killer.

Totally agree. Look at the history of business and consider how TIMING has played such a key role in the success or failure of products and services through time.

You noted that you don't care what the future of TV "is or may be" and that's fair. However, whether anyone cares about that or not, is it reasonable to conclude for at least a few years or so that things are going to continue to operate primarily as they do now. Could you imagine having to pay to watch ESPN Gameday on Saturdays in the fall within the next five or so years?

Did Aresco believe that he "saw the future" and wanted to demonstrate his visionary prowess? More realistically, did he simply gulp and swallow what they shoved down his throat due to the AAC's lack of top-level appeal and stature? I think we can all safely assume it was the latter.

The AAC is too soon to the paywall party. And it's too soon, whether it was forced to go there or not, by at least a few years. It's going to pay dearly for that mistake in what already is a "market" marked by growing disparity between the haves and the have nots.

One other thing, in the face of such perceived go-forward radical change in an industry, why lock in for the term they did? 12 years? Really? Why, to make the gross number look "impressive" to the casual observer? I presume they have a termination provision in their agreement that will allow them to exit it if they believe it's in their best interests to do so, and without big financial penalties.

If the only truly positive thing that can be said for this deal is that they ended up with more media payout money than they had before, and knowing that the new payout isn't even remotely close to serving as a stop gap for funding athletic department losses, then it simply is a truly bad deal, and there is no way to spin it otherwise.