Conference expansion

[dog12]

Arkansas, really. Guess they forgot why Arkansas left in the first place along with others. UR rules the roost in that conference and money is not split evenly. Yea they’ll go back for an unequal share and take a significant pay cut.

You meant to say University of Texas (UT), right?

 

[SteelCurtain74]

Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

It’s ALL about TV markets when it comes to expansion...nothing else. Adding viewers in two Top 50 markets (St. Louis, KC) was huge for the SEC, regardless of what you think of the school itself.

SEC will likely look to North Carolina, Virginia, or Oklahoma for any future expansion...with Oklahoma / Oklahoma State being far less likely than, say, an NC State or Virginia Tech.

If that's all it's about then Houston or TCU should have been the play, not Missouri. Two of the top ten markets in the country, not to mention more of a recruiting base for a lot of the teams in the SEC.

 

[MarkDallas]

So what I'm saying is, never say never, these things are never as rigid as you think. All the older baby boomers are the ones who love 'cable', the younger generations are streaming almost exclusively.

 

[Go Budaw]

If the sec has an opportunity to add Texas, they better do it way before adding Virginia or similar.

I believe it was OOB show. A Cowboys expert, guest, made the comment that adding aTM didn't grab the Dallas market as expected. The UofTexas and B12 still gets the majority of viewers in Dallas.

NC and Virginia would be the target states. North Carolina has 10.5 million people, and Virginia has over 8 milion. You add a school from either state, you get an entire state subscriber footprint that immediately becomes the 3rd largest in the whole SEC, trailing only Florida and Texas.

The “want” list for the SEC would be UVA, Va Tech, UNC, Duke, NC State. They probably would take one Virginia school and one NC school if they could draw it up how they wanted for a simple 2-school addition. Oklahoma would be desirable as well if either OU or OSU wanted to jump, but rumor is those two are tied at the hip and will only leave together. That makes the juice probably not worth the squeeze for a smallish state like Oklahoma, although the Sooners are very much a national brand for football.

The one exception would probably be Wake Forest…they are a tiny school with a small fanbase and the formula used by ESPN to calculate the subscriber footprint from adding them would be a bit different than it would be for NC State, UNC, or Duke.

A potential future darkhorse expansion candidate….East Carolina. They have a larger enrollment (~23,000) and more alumni than you would expect, as well as a 51,000 seat football stadium that they have built up without the benefit of any Power 5 TV contract money or tie-in. The SEC would probably have to strike out on multiple other NC / VA schools first, but it could happen down the road if the cards fell right. They would definitely be more desirable than a Wake Forest, etc.

 

[IBleedMaroonDawg]

The problem is that Missouri radiates ***** *** ***** everywhere they step. They don't fit socially, politically, geographically, or professionally.

Nobody will be upset if they jump ship and discontinue the watering down of our conference.

THIS is the reason Missouri does not fit with the SEC. It has history and competes well but does Missouri really pop in your mind when you think of a classic fall SEC battle? No atmosphere. No tailgating or rabid fans who are shirtless with school colors painted on their chest and face. No hot *** coeds in the stands.

I think we can do better than that by either "promoting" programs on the rise in the south or poaching some ACC teams that would be a better fit in our conference. It would also be smart to grab another Texas school to create a rivalry with aTm.

 

[Russ Wheeler]

It's not about "fit" or quality of programs. It's all driven by TV money. That's why we took Missouri and why we will never take Clemson, FSU, either of the Oklahoma schools, or another school from Texas. If we expand again it it will be into North Carolina and Virginia. The new school/s would have to bring in enough TV money so that the existing SEC schools cut of the pie is worth more even with have to cut it into more slices. That last sentence is from a sitting SEC AD's mouth.

You fail to grasp that the TV money models are changing. It will eventually become more about quality of the content, rather than quantity of passive subscribers.

You are a selfish boomer so you still think cable TV subscriptions are still the standard. LOL.

 

[Russ Wheeler]

I would expect FSU to get blocked because of UF not wanting them, but surely Florida is populous enough that if there was mutual interest and the TV formula wouldn't generate enough extra money for it to make sense, ESPN would be willing to make an adjustment. Unless they just already regret the deal and don't want to make it any bigger than it is.

You are dealing with a group that cannot think outside of the previously laid out model (10 years ago). Because obviously, someone did it already and they just keep going with that. They don't get that the model has changed and will change some more.

No conference realignment is ever the same and it's never like people predict. The next one will not go down like the 2011 one did.

 

[Go Budaw]

You fail to grasp that the TV money models are changing. It will eventually become more about quality of the content, rather than quantity of passive subscribers.

You are a selfish boomer so you still think cable TV subscriptions are still the standard. LOL.

Whether it’s cable, DirecTV, YouTubeTV, Sling, or whatever, it’s still a package that contains ESPN, Fox Sports, etc. The more things change, the more they stay the same. All of the streaming services are sporadically adding 3 ****** channels every 6 months to a year to justify a $10-$15 per month price increase whenever they need it. They all have ESPN and Fox Sports as part of the basic package. It’s just cable by another name, now. YouTubeTV is 17ing $65 per month now. Netflix is damn near $20 month now if you want 4K. You get both and you are already locked in to what a normal basic cable bill would be. The whole cord cutting “movement” has been a racket that has padded everybody’s pocket while pulling a big *** bait and switch on consumers everywhere.

 

[Go Budaw]

If that's all it's about then Houston or TCU should have been the play, not Missouri. Two of the top ten markets in the country, not to mention more of a recruiting base for a lot of the teams in the SEC.

Houston and Dallas were already locked in from the A&M addition. Did you somehow think they only brought in the Bryan / College Station market?

 

[Go Budaw]

You are dealing with a group that cannot think outside of the previously laid out model (10 years ago). Because obviously, someone did it already and they just keep going with that. They don't get that the model has changed and will change some more.

No conference realignment is ever the same and it's never like people predict. The next one will not go down like the 2011 one did.

The next one will go down how then, genius? Money is going to be most important, as always. The #1 source of money is number of eyeballs watching the product, due to advertising revenue opportunities. The number of eyeballs available to watch the product is tied to city / state populations, school alumni footprints and income levels, etc. No matter what “model” you use, it’s always going to come back to that, without fail. That will be the case until ESPN shifts their model completely away from an ad-based revenue source to a subscription-only based model....think $50 per month or more for commercial free sports (ain’t happening).

You can tweak how much emphasis you put on minor variables, but the overall recipe is not going to change. Even after cord cutting, over 65% of American households can turn on their television and watch ESPN’s family of networks. There are twice as many ESPN subscribers in North Carolina as there are people living in Mississippi, period, whether they have cable (or even a house), or not. That **** is always going to matter more than anything else.

 

[johnson86-1]

Whether it’s cable, DirecTV, YouTubeTV, Sling, or whatever, it’s still a package that contains ESPN, Fox Sports, etc. The more things change, the more they stay the same. All of the streaming services are sporadically adding 3 ****** channels every 6 months to a year to justify a $10-$15 per month price increase whenever they need it. They all have ESPN and Fox Sports as part of the basic package. It’s just cable by another name, now. YouTubeTV is 17ing $65 per month now. Netflix is damn near $20 month now if you want 4K. You get both and you are already locked in to what a normal basic cable bill would be. The whole cord cutting “movement” has been a racket that has padded everybody’s pocket while pulling a big *** bait and switch on consumers everywhere.

It wasn't a racket as much as a short term free riding opportunity. When very few people were cord cutting, content owners could view deals with streaming services as incremental revenue. Traditional cable/satellite customers could pay for most of the content production and streamers got to pay something well below what the average cost would be if you spread the cost of content across the entire subscriber base. As more and more of the market consists of streaming, streamers have to pay for more of the content and the prices between the two start to converge. There's really no reason for streaming to be cheaper except that if you take it as a given that people are going to have some form of internet service to their house with the capacity to stream, it makes more sense to get content over that infrastructure than it does to pay for a separate infrastructure of satellite tv or cable to get content. Of course, if it's cable internet, it really makes no sense that cable internet and cable tv versus cable internet and equivalent streaming service wouldn't be roughly equivalent in price.

 

[johnson86-1]

I don’t think the TV formula would generate any additional revenue. Certainly not enough to where each of 15 SEC schools would get a bigger slice of pie than they would have now.

There are 20.5 million people in florida.

Tennessee's population is less than 7 million and has two sec schools. Mississippi is 3 million with two sec schools. Alabama is under 5 million with two schools. Kentucky is 4.5 million with one school. Louisiana is 4.7 million with one school. South Carolina is 5 million with one school. Georgia is 10.6 million with one school. Texas is 29 million with one school.

So we roughly have 6.45 million state residents per SEC school. I don't think it's hard to come up with a formula where FSU results in the average payout to each school increases, although possibly not by much. Even if you assume you get a good bit fewer eyeballs for the second team in a state, I think you'd still be able to pretty easily come up with a model where the additional eyeballs from FSU is greater than the average eyeballs per SEC school currently. They'd probably be a less desirable target than UNC/North Carolina St., UVA/Va Tech, or University of Texas. But I think they'd still make financial sense if the conference wanted to expand and couldn't get add two of the VIrginia/North Carolina/UT options.

 

[Bill Shankly]

You fail to grasp that the TV money models are changing. It will eventually become more about quality of the content, rather than quantity of passive subscribers.

You are a selfish boomer so you still think cable TV subscriptions are still the standard. LOL.

Adding another school from the same state makes little sense unless it all goes to pay per view for individual teams only. Then you might be making sense. It's not headed that way.

 

[Bill Shankly]

There are 20.5 million people in florida.

Tennessee's population is less than 7 million and has two sec schools. Mississippi is 3 million with two sec schools. Alabama is under 5 million with two schools. Kentucky is 4.5 million with one school. Louisiana is 4.7 million with one school. South Carolina is 5 million with one school. Georgia is 10.6 million with one school. Texas is 29 million with one school.

So we roughly have 6.45 million state residents per SEC school. I don't think it's hard to come up with a formula where FSU results in the average payout to each school increases, although possibly not by much. Even if you assume you get a good bit fewer eyeballs for the second team in a state, I think you'd still be able to pretty easily come up with a model where the additional eyeballs from FSU is greater than the average eyeballs per SEC school currently. They'd probably be a less desirable target than UNC/North Carolina St., UVA/Va Tech, or University of Texas. But I think they'd still make financial sense if the conference wanted to expand and couldn't get add two of the VIrginia/North Carolina/UT options.

Again, I heard a sitting SEC AD say not all that long ago that we for the foreseeable future would not take another school from the same state because the increased TV money would not be enough to offset splitting the TV money with another school. He was well aware of the changes in delivery coming down the pike. He also said that the increase from taking ONE of the Oklahoma schools would result in a decrease in payout to the existing members, no way we would EVER take both. Same for WVU, not enough people. He never mentioned any states but he said it would be in a state or state that fits the geographic profile that we aren't already in. Then he smiled and said y'all can figure that out. He said because of all of the above and other things he didn't expect to see it happen anytime soon.

 

[Bill Shankly]

You fail to grasp that the TV money models are changing. It will eventually become more about quality of the content, rather than quantity of passive subscribers.

You are a selfish boomer so you still think cable TV subscriptions are still the standard. LOL.

You fail to grasp that that won't change a thing, unless we are forced to start subscribing to individual teams or games. Every "new" delivery system out there is still cable by other means. It's they all offer the same content when it comes to sports. Even if you pay ala carte you are still paying for the various sports channels. The closest thing we have ever had to what you seem to think is coming was GamePlan. Notice that isn't around any more. It's becoming MORE packaged, not less.

 

[Go Budaw]

It wasn't a racket as much as a short term free riding opportunity. When very few people were cord cutting, content owners could view deals with streaming services as incremental revenue. Traditional cable/satellite customers could pay for most of the content production and streamers got to pay something well below what the average cost would be if you spread the cost of content across the entire subscriber base. As more and more of the market consists of streaming, streamers have to pay for more of the content and the prices between the two start to converge. There's really no reason for streaming to be cheaper except that if you take it as a given that people are going to have some form of internet service to their house with the capacity to stream, it makes more sense to get content over that infrastructure than it does to pay for a separate infrastructure of satellite tv or cable to get content. Of course, if it's cable internet, it really makes no sense that cable internet and cable tv versus cable internet and equivalent streaming service wouldn't be roughly equivalent in price.

No reason to be cheaper? There is basically none of the same overhead that cable companies have. No hard wiring of utilities through neighborhoods, no receiver boxes to install, installation / repairmen to employ, brick and mortar buildings to maintain, satellite antenna / equipment, etc. Every cost required for the infrastructure to deliver the content to the end user is paid for by the customer via a 3rd party. Have servers and online distribution framework, and IT team to manage it, and that’s it. Companies like Google and Disney already have all that in spades.

Streaming is also just an inferior product (even if only slightly so) by most any measure of audio / video quality and general interface. Refresh rates can’t touch what you get with Fiber or DirecTV, often you have the audio out of sync with the video feed, and the channel guides pretty much all suck. With sports, there is also a huge time lag compared to non-streaming services. Can’t count how many times I’ve been tipped off to something that was about to happen in a game by somebody in my group text saying something about it a full minute before it happened.

So yes, there are a ton of reasons why streaming “should” be cheaper.

 

[Choctaw Dawg]

Again, I heard a sitting SEC AD say not all that long ago that we for the foreseeable future would not take another school from the same state because the increased TV money would not be enough to offset splitting the TV money with another school. He was well aware of the changes in delivery coming down the pike. He also said that the increase from taking ONE of the Oklahoma schools would result in a decrease in payout to the existing members, no way we would EVER take both. Same for WVU, not enough people. He never mentioned any states but he said it would be in a state or state that fits the geographic profile that we aren't already in. Then he smiled and said y'all can figure that out. He said because of all of the above and other things he didn't expect to see it happen anytime soon.

Kentucky, Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia all have an agreement that if any school tries to join from those four states than those universities would vote against their membership to the SEC, and you have to have unanimous approval to join the SEC. So you will never see schools like Georgia Tech, Louisville, Clemson, Florida State or Miami in the SEC.

 

[Bill Shankly]

Looking at TV eyeballs in the particular state, is a 10-year old model. There will be changes the next round. I suspect that the next model will prioritize QUALITY of games, that would draw NATIONAL eyes. Florida vs. Florida State would do that better than Florida vs. Virginia Tech. Nowadays you've got streaming and all these other things, not just cable networks, that are driving the economics.

So what I'm saying is, never say never, these things are never as rigid as you think. All the older baby boomers are the ones who love 'cable', the younger generations are streaming almost exclusively.

You are still streaming the same content, from the same broadcasters, when it comes to sport. FYI, I still have cable because cable is the best internet I can get where I live and the package is cheaper than internet plus any streaming service that has all the sports I want. That being said I'm streaming about as much content as I am watching on cable. MUCH more if you don't count sports. Your stereotypes are amusing, and say a LOT more about you than they do your victims. I'll say this, you are a good entertainment value.......since I don't pay for it.

 

[patdog]

No doubt. If/when the SEC expands, it will be a North Carolina school and a Virginia school. But like him, I don't know that it will happen any time soon, and maybe never. Cause we're not taking East Carolina and VCU.

 

[Go Budaw]

FSU brings zero new SEC Network subscribers. To be competitive, every cable / satellite / streaming provider in the state already has to provide SEC Network as part of any basic package that includes ESPN….due to the heavy UF contingent throughout the state. Same with the ACC Network due to Miami / FSU. Big picture is that anyone living in Florida who is paying for ESPN is already paying for both the SEC and ACC networks.

ESPN has no reason to push FSU to the SEC either. At best, its a wash for them since they control both the SEC and ACC Networks. It may even be worse for them, as they’d go from being able to broadcast 9 high profile conference games with FSU in the ACC to only 8 with them being in the SEC (and they already play Florida every year, so really its almost like dropping two high profile games). And it really makes no sense for FSU, either. Even if you were able to find some marginal revenue increase, it wouldn’t offset having to worry about 4-5 other high level teams on your schedule every year instead of just Clemson. It’s just not a good deal for anybody involved.

 

[DAWG61]

Missouri voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2020. 56% Trump to 41% for Biden. They border Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas. Their addition along with aTm has helped bring MSU over $200 million dollars since their arrival. Do we have a new baseball stadium, a national championship, new additions to the football stadium, two natty appearances in WBB, a borderline HOF basketball coach and Mike Leach coaching our football team without that extra $200 million? Probably not all maybe some.

To me Missouri is a perfect add. They don't dominate but aren't a total embarrassment on the field either. We can beat them half the time if not more. They aren't too annoying online spamming our boards or trying to be our big rivals. We rarely go head to head vs them in recruiting. I mean I don't know what y'all want from a team we only play once every 6 years in football? You want someone you can be a **** fan for that'll whip our *** when we play them? Just let them sit in the East while we poach cable dollars from their 6 million population and be done with it.