Youâre not wrong. I just wonder how much appetite the SEC and Big 10 schools have fore further expansion. The conference would be betting on expansion helping visibility and interest and hoping the big two are not threatened (they wouldnât be with moves being discussed) and standing pat. Itâs a gamble for sure though.
Like you said, itâs a moot point because thereâs no process, but I would be interested to see what that vote on Wake would actually look like now. Youâre probably right, but things are getting cut throat in the realignment world. They are a tiny tiny school in a media market we already cover with three other schools. Theyâve done barely anything of note in the revenue sports lately, besides having a somewhat over-performing football team that still attracts like zero attention (that said, shout out to their baseball team). Maybe Iâm wrong, but if we could swap them out and swap BC for like a UConn like you said, weâd be in somewhat better shape.
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Nicole Auerbach in The Athletic today questions whether ACC expansion might somehow weaken the grant of rights. Says she has asked around but has not received a clear answer. Something I had not contemplated.
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Uh, no on kicking Wake out. Football is solid as long as Clawson is there. Bball is getting better but does need to be more consistent. âNon-revenueâ sports are good to very good. Yes, the alumni base is small. BC can go. So could others but letâs keep the Deacs please 
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Hey, I have a big soft spot for Wake too! And theyâre a major part of the conferenceâs history. I donât necessarily want to, just on paper they almost certainly arenât justifying their share of the revenue split. Theyâre just too small and in a region we already blanket. They arenât bringing in enough eyeballs.
But really, I just hate all this realignment away from normal geographic conferences. I wish we could roll back the clock or that I could be given dictatorial powers for a year to return it to some semblance of sanity. Itâs been slowly making less sense for a while but was tenable, but then the USC and UCLA jump to the BIG10 really broke things, at least for me. Now we all just need to scramble for survival and try and keep our revenue share somewhat close to the big boys, lest we get totally left behind and struggle to remain competitive.
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Can someone explain to me how FSU thinks it can leave the ACC? That article said:
The question is whether FSU can afford a departure fee approaching nearly $500 million should its divorce lead to legal wrangling with the ACC.
I mean, unless their strategy is to win MegaMillions this week, how does FSU expect to pay that?
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That makes no sense. Everything Iâve read and heard about FSU for the last 5 plus years is the athletic program is in piss poor financial state. I think theyâre still paying like 3 football coaches and their facilities are lacking.
No wathey can eat that hit
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Again, unless FSU lawyers figured an ironclad way out of the GOR they arent going nowhere for a while.
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Maybe theyâre counting on DeSantis '24 to bail them out of the GOR.
I donât think they have much appetite. The new Big XII contract has a proportional increase clause that increases the rights fee by a proportionate amount if they add a P5 school. But they get nothing more if they add a G5 or other non-P5 school. The SEC contract doesnât appear to have that kind of language because when they went to ESPN for more money after they added UT and OU, Disney said no.
In other news, Disney is looking at options for selling ABC and taking on partners for ESPN. ESPN+ has negligible stand alone subscribers (vs bundle subscribers with Disney+ or Hulu+), so revenue keeps dropping. Theyâre not in a mood to increase costs (rights fees payments) while facing decreasing revenue. So it seems that Disneyâs current thinking is trying to convince sports leagues and college conferences to buy equity in ESPN through contribution of programming inventory. Voila, now Disney can eliminate or at least reduce expenses and instead pays out dividends to the leagues.
No idea if thisâll fly or if they can get buy in from the leagues, but what absolutely wonât happen is ESPN voluntarily paying more for content through rights fees.
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When it comes to broadcasting decisions, always remember the words of former tv executive Don Ohlmeyer, âThe answer to all your questions is money.â
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This is a good point. Anyone whoâs been watching events at ESPN (or Disney) is clear that these folks are in steep cost-cutting mode (as are pretty much all of the streaming folks) and the $$ available for content is almost certainly going to drop sharply after several years of very brisk spending.
The point being, the gap between the SEC and ACC might not keep growing at its recent rate.
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after several years of very brisk spending.
Aye theres the rub. If you already ran through it are you really cutting costs?
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Figured this should be added to the conversation. Not what we would hope for, but certainly a rumor to discussâŠ
-e
Still so strange that:
A) networks are having financial troubles. Basically on and off for the last decade
B) interest in college football is steadily declining.
Yet
C) the tv payouts to conferences keep increasing
Somethingâs gotta give soon. Makes you wonder if the PAC 12âs difficulty getting a new deal is a sign of things to come rather than the PAC 12 being inept
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I donât follow the business of this stuff too closely, but itâs also happening in a TV environment where the relative value of live sports has gone up quite a bit. Also, is (B) correct? I know attendance has declined, but have ratings gone down?
I think this would be great. Gets the ball rolling on ACC break up and makes the path to the SEC clearer for us
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Yep, letâs get the ball rollingâŠ
& regarding espn and the loot.
Eyeballs will still be there for whomever picks up the ball if espn drops it.
It may be the power 2 doing their own subscription system or something else.
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Sports are seemingly one of the last things people watch live and which they are consequently willing to tolerate ads during.
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Disappointing as that would be a much better fit for us (and our fan base)
Guess that pushes us to SEC?
Iâm petty but I just want to get somewhere and leave VT in the cold.
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