(06-01-2015 08:55 AM)Lou_C Wrote:  

(05-31-2015 06:02 PM)GTFletch Wrote:  

(05-31-2015 05:56 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  I would pay $10/mo for 1080 HD coverage of all non-broadcast coverage. That's football, basketball (both), baseball, lacrosse, etc. Broadcast coverage should be available within 48 hours. It should include weekly news shows for each member institution and the league itself. It should also include the FULL back catalog of major games (football, men's basketball, baseball). And they should put on entry level educational programming from the member institutions as well. You should be able to watch some business 101 type classes at Georgia Tech, some foreign language 101 at UNC, etc.

I would as well.....and I bet the ACC could get 5M subscribers pretty easy....

It took the WWE network almost a year to hit 1 million subscribers. You know, one of the most consistently highly rated products on cable? And in addition, people with the WWE network get PPVs for free...so for hardcore fans who buy PPVs, it actually net costs them nothing.

Hulu, at $7.99 a month, has like 6-7 million subscribers.

It will NOT be easy for the ACC to land 5 million subscribers at $10/mo year round.

Holding ONE million subscribers year round within the first couple years would be a miracle. More [b]likely you're looking at a peak of MAYBE a million during basketball season[/b] at best, and in the low hundred thousands in the off-season.

If there were 5 million+ people willing to watch, let alone pay $10/mo for baseball, womens' basketball, lacrosse, soccer, volleyball etc, that stuff would already be all over TV now. But nobody watches that stuff when it is on for free on the cable package they already pay for. The number who will slap down $10/mo for it is miniscule.

I'm all for a digital supplement being made available to cordcutters and alternative delivery options, but the ACC is not going to make major bank in the short term by going broadband only a-la-cart. If that's what the ACC ends up with, then we've lost already.

Good numbers, Lou, but I wonder if you did the math before proclaiming digital a lost cause? Let's look at 1 million subscribers (average) X $10/mo.

1M X $10/month X 12 months/year = $120M/year
per team: $120M/year / 15 shares (ACC and/or ND gets one) = $8M/year

That's pretty close to what the SEC Network is paying.

No doubt, there are EASIER ways to get money:
1) Over-the-air, which relies on huge audiences and selling advertisements
2) Cable channel, which relies on subscriptions (and needs to be on as low a tier as possible).

And you could argue that 1M Digital subscribers is too many... but I'm not so sure. Let's say it's only 1 million during football and basketball seasons, but drops to 100,000 the rest of the year - that's still at least 7 months of the year at 1M... what if they pay $15/month? Now the math is

1M X $15/month X 7 months/year = $105M/year
plus 0.1M x $15 x 5 months = $7.5M/year
annual total = $112.5M/15 shares = $7.5M/year

Which, again, is not unrealistic IMHO. Also, how valuable would advertising be for such a targeted market?

(06-01-2015 10:08 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  

(06-01-2015 08:55 AM)Lou_C Wrote:  

(05-31-2015 06:02 PM)GTFletch Wrote:  

(05-31-2015 05:56 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  I would pay $10/mo for 1080 HD coverage of all non-broadcast coverage. That's football, basketball (both), baseball, lacrosse, etc. Broadcast coverage should be available within 48 hours. It should include weekly news shows for each member institution and the league itself. It should also include the FULL back catalog of major games (football, men's basketball, baseball). And they should put on entry level educational programming from the member institutions as well. You should be able to watch some business 101 type classes at Georgia Tech, some foreign language 101 at UNC, etc.

I would as well.....and I bet the ACC could get 5M subscribers pretty easy....

It took the WWE network almost a year to hit 1 million subscribers. You know, one of the most consistently highly rated products on cable? And in addition, people with the WWE network get PPVs for free...so for hardcore fans who buy PPVs, it actually net costs them nothing.

Hulu, at $7.99 a month, has like 6-7 million subscribers.

It will NOT be easy for the ACC to land 5 million subscribers at $10/mo year round.

Holding ONE million subscribers year round within the first couple years would be a miracle. More [b]likely you're looking at a peak of MAYBE a million during basketball season[/b] at best, and in the low hundred thousands in the off-season.

If there were 5 million+ people willing to watch, let alone pay $10/mo for baseball, womens' basketball, lacrosse, soccer, volleyball etc, that stuff would already be all over TV now. But nobody watches that stuff when it is on for free on the cable package they already pay for. The number who will slap down $10/mo for it is miniscule.

I'm all for a digital supplement being made available to cordcutters and alternative delivery options, but the ACC is not going to make major bank in the short term by going broadband only a-la-cart. If that's what the ACC ends up with, then we've lost already.

Good numbers, Lou, but I wonder if you did the math before proclaiming digital a lost cause? Let's look at 1 million subscribers (average) X $10/mo.

1M X $10/month X 12 months/year = $120M/year
per team: $120M/year / 15 shares (ACC and/or ND gets one) = $8M/year

That's pretty close to what the SEC Network is paying.

No doubt, there are EASIER ways to get money:
1) Over-the-air, which relies on huge audiences and selling advertisements
2) Cable channel, which relies on subscriptions (and needs to be on as low a tier as possible).

And you could argue that 1M Digital subscribers is too many... but I'm not so sure. Let's say it's only 1 million during football and basketball seasons, but drops to 100,000 the rest of the year - that's still at least 7 months of the year at 1M... what if they pay $15/month? Now the math is

1M X $15/month X 7 months/year = $105M/year
plus 0.1M x $15 x 5 months = $7.5M/year
annual total = $112.5M/15 shares = $7.5M/year

Which, again, is not unrealistic IMHO. Also, how valuable would advertising be for such a targeted market?

No, I certainly didn't run the numbers, I was mainly responding to the 5 million suggestion, or suggestions people frequently throw out there that the ACC could easily get 5 or 10 million subscribers because of the footprint. And of course, there are costs for everything...

But if half a million subscribers nets $4M per team...which is probably the bare minimum you would need to avoid having the network declared dead on arrival in the media...eh, it's somewhat intriguing.

I have no idea of course if half a million is realistic or not...that's still an awful lot of hardcore ACC Olympic sports fans, but it at least seems theoretically plausible.

Of course, the ACC can't "go it alone" anyway because we're tied to ESPN, but it's conceivable that ESPN would want to do something in this arena as a step toward the future, I don't know.

I still think from an exposure standpoint it's much better to be on a channel people can flip to, and 85% of people are still getting their programming through cable, but it's interesting.

I wonder if there could be a hybrid model in play...let's say there's an ESPN ACC Network and the carriage rate is set at, I don't know, half that of the SEC network, to make for a fairly easy carriage negotiation.

But then there is a digital supplement that can be purchased standalone (like HBO Now) for $6 a month or something. And that ACC Now subscription will be available to anyone whether you have cable or not. And it would not only simulcast all the programming of the ACC Network, but it would also contain the all time digital library of the ACC. The ACC Now app could also have multiple streams of programming, not just what the ACC Network is showing.

So you would have ACC Now available to cord cutters, and anyone whose cable system doesn't pick it up. But it would also be available to people who do get the ACC Network, but do want more content, both live and archived.

You might really have something there...I mean bandwidth/storage aside, an ACC Now could really provide nearly unlimited school specific content, which would really up the likelihood that someone who's primarily a fan of one school (which is the vast majority of people) would find value there.

Raycom is deep into the digital space, and perhaps that could be leveraged against the startup and management costs of the digital component. Raycom certainly has the resources and ability to produce additional streams beyond what ESPN might choose for the ACC Network broadcasts. Perhaps Raycom could incur the startup costs in return for being the provider of choice for the digital platform?

Just spitballing, but I would be very intrigued by that model, more so that just jumping 100% into the WWE model. It would be an excellent bridge to the future.

As for Netflix...the one that really intrigues me is Amazon. Netflix would be tough...it's so far outside their brand.

But Amazon is different...they are in everything...and it's very easy to see them being interested in making the jump into live sports. How much would they be willing to spend to add the ACC Network to Amazon Prime?

Because with Amazon...if they can get someone signed up for Amazon Prime...they basically only have to break even on the deal.

So, Amazon Prime is $100 a year. Let's say it's decided that adding an ACC Network to Amazon Prime video would earn them 600,000 new prime subscribers. That might actually be pretty darn conservative considering the benefits of Amazon Prime (2-day shipping, other prime video, free kindle books, streaming music, etc). At $100/yr, that's $60M per year in new subscriber revenue.

Amazon, unlike Netflix or Hulu or whoever that needs to make actual money off the deal to make it worthwhile, might be willing to pay all of that back to the ACC, or $4-5M per team per year. Hell, they might be willing to pay MORE than that back. Because once you're a prime member, you're more likely to use them for other products and services....unlike Netflix, Amazon is going to make money if you by a Kindle Fire or your next box of coffee from them, even if they pass all their subscriber fees right through to the conference. I'm sure they have a gazillion analyses to tell them how much money in additional revenue each Amazon Prime member is worth to them beyond subscriber fees.

Of course, there are still costs for actual production...Amazon isn't going to get in that part of the game almost certainly, so that would be up to the conference. But throw in some advertising revenue...who the hell knows? I just think that Amazon, not Netflix, is the ideal partner in something like this, because they are most in position to monetize it.

Of course, all that is pretty much off the board while we are with ESPN anyway.

(05-29-2015 10:30 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  These people will not deal kindly to being substantially behind in conference payout due to their in state SEC rivals:
- Georgia Tech
- Clemson
- Florida State

The GTAA is in a poor state financially despite already sponsoring the ACC and Title IX minimums, so that goes double for GT. I don't include Louisville because Kentucky doesn't much seem to care about football and it is hard to see Kentucky getting up off the mat.

The problem is if teams peel off out of the South, they tend to come as a non-solo package. UNC and Duke are a bundle deal. And where they go, they want UVA and GT to go. Where GT goes it wants Clemson to follow -- almost mandatory unless GT goes to the SEC where it picks up 4 major rivals in the move. NCST/VT/Wake in that order would have the next highest pull. Everybody north of the Potomac or south of Orlando would be screwed.

The better question is -- is any conference within reason (B1G/SEC) capable of absorbing 4 ACC teams AND still making more money? Because I think that's the minimum they'd have to take if they're pulling out of the south. Realistically, they'd need to take 6. And at that point whatever is left of the ACC is just the Big East again.

SEC: Vandy, TN, UK, Mizzou, TAMU, Miss State, Ole Miss, Auburn, Bama, UGAg, USC-East, UF, LSU, Arkansas + 4/6 ACC?
B1G: Michigan, Michigan State, Illinois, Purdue, Indiana, Northwestern, Maryland, Rutgers, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska + 4/6 ACC?

There are some serious fit issues there. For one ... those are ENORMOUS leagues. But I think the revenue would actually go up with the TV networks. More seriously ... if you're the SEC ... and you have to take on 4 to 6 .... why the hell would you choose 4 out of the ACC over Texas, OU, Oklahoma State, TCU, [Baylor/Kansas/Kansas State]? If you're in the ACC as presently formed ... why would you go to the B1G where demographics are going to be relentlessly against you as the rust belt bleeds out from its political policies? You'd need to have a foreign AD willing to piss off the fans for short term gain (UMD), or have serious financial pressures against your primary competitors (FSU, Clemson, GT).

To me .... if makes the most sense if Swofford ever gets the ACCN up and running and presses home the ACC's enormous TV set advantage to turn gaze to the SEC/B1G. If the ACC were money top dog, I really do think raiding the SEC and other nearby teams is viable. The biggest financial wins would be Tennessee, Alabama, Auburn, Florida, and Kentucky. And the SEC wouldn't be TOO bitter about that if they swap out those four for Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and TCU.

If you want to draw a hypothetical landscape of four mega conferences that is realistic both in culture, combo deal relocations, and punting geography over dollars:
ACC Coastal South: Miami, FSU, UCF, Clemson, Georgia Tech,
ACC Coastal North: Auburn, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisville
ACC Atlantic South: UNC, Duke, NC State, Wake Forest, Virginia
ACC Atlantic North: Boston College, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, West Virginia, Virginia Tech

SEC Eastern: USC-East, Florida, Georgia, Vanderbilt
SEC Central: Ole Miss, Miss State, LSU, Arkansas
SEC Western: Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Kansas, Mizzou
SEC Texan: TAMU, Texas, TCU, Baylor

Pac-12: As-is ... don't see TTU or Boise adding net money.

B1G: As-is ... maybe + Iowa State/K State

Tah dah ... four super conferences ... each with its own TV network. You could probably do another variation where the B1G eats the ACC's northern teams and so the ACC picks up ... maybe Vandy, UF, USF, etc. And the SEC picks what is left of the Big 12 for whatever it needs.

Hey GTS, why didn't the ACC take UF/UGAg/USC-East ..... because the ACC is already in those markets. Yea they all make great sense ... but bigger dollars are out there to be had.

GTS, I understand how this would benefit the ACC, but you've yet to present a convincing case of how such a move would be beneficial to the former SEC schools. As long as CBS still hold the SEC's tier one rights, there will always exist a ratchet to counter whatever sweet nothings the ACC might whisper. More importantly, moving to the ACC would force these schools to play in markets that are apathetic about football and offer no recruiting advantages. Why would the Vols want to deal with the same issues that Clemson is going through regarding playing BC and 'Cuse?

(06-01-2015 11:27 AM)Lou_C Wrote:  

(06-01-2015 10:08 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  

(06-01-2015 08:55 AM)Lou_C Wrote:  

(05-31-2015 06:02 PM)GTFletch Wrote:  

(05-31-2015 05:56 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  I would pay $10/mo for 1080 HD coverage of all non-broadcast coverage. That's football, basketball (both), baseball, lacrosse, etc. Broadcast coverage should be available within 48 hours. It should include weekly news shows for each member institution and the league itself. It should also include the FULL back catalog of major games (football, men's basketball, baseball). And they should put on entry level educational programming from the member institutions as well. You should be able to watch some business 101 type classes at Georgia Tech, some foreign language 101 at UNC, etc.

I would as well.....and I bet the ACC could get 5M subscribers pretty easy....

It took the WWE network almost a year to hit 1 million subscribers. You know, one of the most consistently highly rated products on cable? And in addition, people with the WWE network get PPVs for free...so for hardcore fans who buy PPVs, it actually net costs them nothing.

Hulu, at $7.99 a month, has like 6-7 million subscribers.

It will NOT be easy for the ACC to land 5 million subscribers at $10/mo year round.

Holding ONE million subscribers year round within the first couple years would be a miracle. More [b]likely you're looking at a peak of MAYBE a million during basketball season[/b] at best, and in the low hundred thousands in the off-season.

If there were 5 million+ people willing to watch, let alone pay $10/mo for baseball, womens' basketball, lacrosse, soccer, volleyball etc, that stuff would already be all over TV now. But nobody watches that stuff when it is on for free on the cable package they already pay for. The number who will slap down $10/mo for it is miniscule.

I'm all for a digital supplement being made available to cordcutters and alternative delivery options, but the ACC is not going to make major bank in the short term by going broadband only a-la-cart. If that's what the ACC ends up with, then we've lost already.

Good numbers, Lou, but I wonder if you did the math before proclaiming digital a lost cause? Let's look at 1 million subscribers (average) X $10/mo.

1M X $10/month X 12 months/year = $120M/year
per team: $120M/year / 15 shares (ACC and/or ND gets one) = $8M/year

That's pretty close to what the SEC Network is paying.

No doubt, there are EASIER ways to get money:
1) Over-the-air, which relies on huge audiences and selling advertisements
2) Cable channel, which relies on subscriptions (and needs to be on as low a tier as possible).

And you could argue that 1M Digital subscribers is too many... but I'm not so sure. Let's say it's only 1 million during football and basketball seasons, but drops to 100,000 the rest of the year - that's still at least 7 months of the year at 1M... what if they pay $15/month? Now the math is

1M X $15/month X 7 months/year = $105M/year
plus 0.1M x $15 x 5 months = $7.5M/year
annual total = $112.5M/15 shares = $7.5M/year

Which, again, is not unrealistic IMHO. Also, how valuable would advertising be for such a targeted market?

No, I certainly didn't run the numbers, I was mainly responding to the 5 million suggestion, or suggestions people frequently throw out there that the ACC could easily get 5 or 10 million subscribers because of the footprint. And of course, there are costs for everything...

But if half a million subscribers nets $4M per team...which is probably the bare minimum you would need to avoid having the network declared dead on arrival in the media...eh, it's somewhat intriguing.

I have no idea of course if half a million is realistic or not...that's still an awful lot of hardcore ACC Olympic sports fans, but it at least seems theoretically plausible.

Of course, the ACC can't "go it alone" anyway because we're tied to ESPN, but it's conceivable that ESPN would want to do something in this arena as a step toward the future, I don't know.

I still think from an exposure standpoint it's much better to be on a channel people can flip to, and 85% of people are still getting their programming through cable, but it's interesting.

I wonder if there could be a hybrid model in play...let's say there's an ESPN ACC Network and the carriage rate is set at, I don't know, half that of the SEC network, to make for a fairly easy carriage negotiation.

But then there is a digital supplement that can be purchased standalone (like HBO Now) for $6 a month or something. And that ACC Now subscription will be available to anyone whether you have cable or not. And it would not only simulcast all the programming of the ACC Network, but it would also contain the all time digital library of the ACC. The ACC Now app could also have multiple streams of programming, not just what the ACC Network is showing.

So you would have ACC Now available to cord cutters, and anyone whose cable system doesn't pick it up. But it would also be available to people who do get the ACC Network, but do want more content, both live and archived.

You might really have something there...I mean bandwidth/storage aside, an ACC Now could really provide nearly unlimited school specific content, which would really up the likelihood that someone who's primarily a fan of one school (which is the vast majority of people) would find value there.

Raycom is deep into the digital space, and perhaps that could be leveraged against the startup and management costs of the digital component. Raycom certainly has the resources and ability to produce additional streams beyond what ESPN might choose for the ACC Network broadcasts. Perhaps Raycom could incur the startup costs in return for being the provider of choice for the digital platform?

Just spitballing, but I would be very intrigued by that model, more so that just jumping 100% into the WWE model. It would be an excellent bridge to the future.

OK Lou... I will try and crack the 5million nut for ya....

How many loyal ND alumni are out in the US who would pay $10 a month?
How many loyal Cuse fans are there?
Duke?
UNC?
FSU?
Maimi?


Ok... SO then how many local sports bars close to the Universities in everytown that houses an ACC school is there??

SO lets say that ND, only brought 1 M subscribers worldwide ( I think that number is low since the great BYU has 5 million that is always spoken about)

Cuse, DUKE, UNC, bring in 500 K

So before I get to the Wake Forest of the ACC I am sitting at 2.5 Million....
Without adding in UofL, FSU Miami and BC, VT or GT...

The ACC can get 5M quick....the issue isn't that, the issue is how does the ACC brand grow outside of the 5M dedicated and that means that the 24/7 ACC channel has to be quality.. Better to go slow then to hurry and do a LHN...

(06-01-2015 11:45 AM)Lou_C Wrote:  As for Netflix...the one that really intrigues me is Amazon. Netflix would be tough...it's so far outside their brand.

But Amazon is different...they are in everything...and it's very easy to see them being interested in making the jump into live sports. How much would they be willing to spend to add the ACC Network to Amazon Prime?

Because with Amazon...if they can get someone signed up for Amazon Prime...they basically only have to break even on the deal.

So, Amazon Prime is $100 a year. Let's say it's decided that adding an ACC Network to Amazon Prime video would earn them 600,000 new prime subscribers. That might actually be pretty darn conservative considering the benefits of Amazon Prime (2-day shipping, other prime video, free kindle books, streaming music, etc). At $100/yr, that's $60M per year in new subscriber revenue.

Amazon, unlike Netflix or Hulu or whoever that needs to make actual money off the deal to make it worthwhile, might be willing to pay all of that back to the ACC, or $4-5M per team per year. Hell, they might be willing to pay MORE than that back. Because once you're a prime member, you're more likely to use them for other products and services....unlike Netflix, Amazon is going to make money if you by a Kindle Fire or your next box of coffee from them, even if they pass all their subscriber fees right through to the conference. I'm sure they have a gazillion analyses to tell them how much money in additional revenue each Amazon Prime member is worth to them beyond subscriber fees.

Of course, there are still costs for actual production...Amazon isn't going to get in that part of the game almost certainly, so that would be up to the conference. But throw in some advertising revenue...who the hell knows? I just think that Amazon, not Netflix, is the ideal partner in something like this, because they are most in position to monetize it.

Of course, all that is pretty much off the board while we are with ESPN anyway.

Now you're thinking outside the box. I like that.

I simply referred to Netflix b/c I have an account with them, but your points with Amazon Prime are valid.

The key point is to leverage the next "wave" while the SEC is stuck with ESPN for the foreseeable future. I tend to think the PTBs know this too, which is why they're taking their time with this supposed ACCN.

They know they are sitting on the largest population base, arguable the wealthiest population base, and have a great amount of basketball inventory, and the possibility of leveraging Notre Dame inventory.

(06-01-2015 10:08 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  1M X $10/month X 12 months/year = $120M/year
per team: $120M/year / 15 shares (ACC and/or ND gets one) = $8M/year

That's pretty close to what the SEC Network is paying.

No doubt, there are EASIER ways to get money:
1) Over-the-air, which relies on huge audiences and selling advertisements
2) Cable channel, which relies on subscriptions (and needs to be on as low a tier as possible).

And you could argue that 1M Digital subscribers is too many... but I'm not so sure. Let's say it's only 1 million during football and basketball seasons, but drops to 100,000 the rest of the year - that's still at least 7 months of the year at 1M... what if they pay $15/month? Now the math is

1M X $15/month X 7 months/year = $105M/year
plus 0.1M x $15 x 5 months = $7.5M/year
annual total = $112.5M/15 shares = $7.5M/year

Which, again, is not unrealistic IMHO. Also, how valuable would advertising be for such a targeted market?

You forgot to pay espn half of the profit. They definitely aren't going to be left out of the revenue making on any possible accn. So if there were zero costs at 1m subscribers and $10/month, it'd be $4 mil/school. And by all accounts it should probably divided by 16, conservatively, since the acc had always taken an equal cut.

But there will also obviously be costs, both in operating costs and initial start up and rights buy back. The first year would do well to just break even at that point.

And if you charge someone $15/month for something big ten/sec fans essentially get free for purchasing cable/satellite, you're not going to hit your optimal subscriber levels. I really don't think people are going to pay that much for an online-only version of a network.

Swofford literally said he sacrificed revenue for more "visibility" with the last deal. What visibility is an online-only network going to get? You're not going to walk into many sports bars and see the accn streaming from a computer. Recruits aren't going to hang out and watch games on their phone when they could just flip on the telly.

People rarely watch Fox sports one and that's available in most American households . How is that going to translate for online content? How much can you really charge in advertising fees when - if you have 1 mil total subscribers - no more than 500k people are watching any single event? Compared to viewers for btn/secn? (Admittedly, I don't know what their average viewer numbers are.)

I think that many confuse revenue with profit. I'm not anywhere close to being as bullish as many on here are about conference networks. I think that they're a plus, but generally only a mild plus. I don't see any game-changing value adds, and I have yet to hear anyone make a compelling argument to the contrary.

I suppose we will get a network, but I think that will primarily be because the presence of an ACCN will increase Swofford's job security. If the market sours on networks, everyone will get hit and Seofford won't look any worse than the next guy. If the market takes off, then Swofford will get credit for the success. From Swofford's perspective, it's a win-tie v a win-loss. That's a no brainer.

(06-01-2015 12:48 PM)GTFletch Wrote:  

(06-01-2015 11:27 AM)Lou_C Wrote:  

(06-01-2015 10:08 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  

(06-01-2015 08:55 AM)Lou_C Wrote:  

(05-31-2015 06:02 PM)GTFletch Wrote:  I would as well.....and I bet the ACC could get 5M subscribers pretty easy....

It took the WWE network almost a year to hit 1 million subscribers. You know, one of the most consistently highly rated products on cable? And in addition, people with the WWE network get PPVs for free...so for hardcore fans who buy PPVs, it actually net costs them nothing.

Hulu, at $7.99 a month, has like 6-7 million subscribers.

It will NOT be easy for the ACC to land 5 million subscribers at $10/mo year round.

Holding ONE million subscribers year round within the first couple years would be a miracle. More [b]likely you're looking at a peak of MAYBE a million during basketball season[/b] at best, and in the low hundred thousands in the off-season.

If there were 5 million+ people willing to watch, let alone pay $10/mo for baseball, womens' basketball, lacrosse, soccer, volleyball etc, that stuff would already be all over TV now. But nobody watches that stuff when it is on for free on the cable package they already pay for. The number who will slap down $10/mo for it is miniscule.

I'm all for a digital supplement being made available to cordcutters and alternative delivery options, but the ACC is not going to make major bank in the short term by going broadband only a-la-cart. If that's what the ACC ends up with, then we've lost already.

Good numbers, Lou, but I wonder if you did the math before proclaiming digital a lost cause? Let's look at 1 million subscribers (average) X $10/mo.

1M X $10/month X 12 months/year = $120M/year
per team: $120M/year / 15 shares (ACC and/or ND gets one) = $8M/year

That's pretty close to what the SEC Network is paying.

No doubt, there are EASIER ways to get money:
1) Over-the-air, which relies on huge audiences and selling advertisements
2) Cable channel, which relies on subscriptions (and needs to be on as low a tier as possible).

And you could argue that 1M Digital subscribers is too many... but I'm not so sure. Let's say it's only 1 million during football and basketball seasons, but drops to 100,000 the rest of the year - that's still at least 7 months of the year at 1M... what if they pay $15/month? Now the math is

1M X $15/month X 7 months/year = $105M/year
plus 0.1M x $15 x 5 months = $7.5M/year
annual total = $112.5M/15 shares = $7.5M/year

Which, again, is not unrealistic IMHO. Also, how valuable would advertising be for such a targeted market?

No, I certainly didn't run the numbers, I was mainly responding to the 5 million suggestion, or suggestions people frequently throw out there that the ACC could easily get 5 or 10 million subscribers because of the footprint. And of course, there are costs for everything...

But if half a million subscribers nets $4M per team...which is probably the bare minimum you would need to avoid having the network declared dead on arrival in the media...eh, it's somewhat intriguing.

I have no idea of course if half a million is realistic or not...that's still an awful lot of hardcore ACC Olympic sports fans, but it at least seems theoretically plausible.

Of course, the ACC can't "go it alone" anyway because we're tied to ESPN, but it's conceivable that ESPN would want to do something in this arena as a step toward the future, I don't know.

I still think from an exposure standpoint it's much better to be on a channel people can flip to, and 85% of people are still getting their programming through cable, but it's interesting.

I wonder if there could be a hybrid model in play...let's say there's an ESPN ACC Network and the carriage rate is set at, I don't know, half that of the SEC network, to make for a fairly easy carriage negotiation.

But then there is a digital supplement that can be purchased standalone (like HBO Now) for $6 a month or something. And that ACC Now subscription will be available to anyone whether you have cable or not. And it would not only simulcast all the programming of the ACC Network, but it would also contain the all time digital library of the ACC. The ACC Now app could also have multiple streams of programming, not just what the ACC Network is showing.

So you would have ACC Now available to cord cutters, and anyone whose cable system doesn't pick it up. But it would also be available to people who do get the ACC Network, but do want more content, both live and archived.

You might really have something there...I mean bandwidth/storage aside, an ACC Now could really provide nearly unlimited school specific content, which would really up the likelihood that someone who's primarily a fan of one school (which is the vast majority of people) would find value there.

Raycom is deep into the digital space, and perhaps that could be leveraged against the startup and management costs of the digital component. Raycom certainly has the resources and ability to produce additional streams beyond what ESPN might choose for the ACC Network broadcasts. Perhaps Raycom could incur the startup costs in return for being the provider of choice for the digital platform?

Just spitballing, but I would be very intrigued by that model, more so that just jumping 100% into the WWE model. It would be an excellent bridge to the future.

OK Lou... I will try and crack the 5million nut for ya....

How many loyal ND alumni are out in the US who would pay $10 a month?
How many loyal Cuse fans are there?
Duke?
UNC?
FSU?
Maimi?


Ok... SO then how many local sports bars close to the Universities in everytown that houses an ACC school is there??

SO lets say that ND, only brought 1 M subscribers worldwide ( I think that number is low since the great BYU has 5 million that is always spoken about)

Cuse, DUKE, UNC, bring in 500 K

So before I get to the Wake Forest of the ACC I am sitting at 2.5 Million....
Without adding in UofL, FSU Miami and BC, VT or GT...

The ACC can get 5M quick....the issue isn't that, the issue is how does the ACC brand grow outside of the 5M dedicated and that means that the 24/7 ACC channel has to be quality.. Better to go slow then to hurry and do a LHN...

The answer to that is...very few (relatively speaking) on all points.

All those Syracuse fans...how much Syracuse content do you think there is going to be on a network? Three basketball games? Two football games? Lacrosse?

I get that lacrosse is "popular" at some ACC schools. But you guys are way, way overestimating how willing people are to drop $120 per year.

Syracuse leads the nation in lacrosse attendance with about 4k people a game. The finals of the lacrosse national championship drew all of 300k viewers.

None of those FSU or Clemson or NC State fans give two craps about Syracuse lacrosse, or UNC girls soccer.

And those Syracuse fans? They don't care about FSU baseball, or Notre Dame water polo.

If we had access to the ESPN3 numbers it would tell the tale I'm sure...I bet women's softball games etc, available now for FREE regularly fail to crack 10k viewers.

I wouldn't subscribe for $10 a month. I'm a huge FSU fan...but I don't care about every sport every team in the ACC plays...I care about hardly any of them. I'll find a way to watch the one FSU football game on the channel, and MAYBE subscribe to basketball season depending on how many FSU games are on. I might watch FSU baseball from time to time if I had the channel, but I'm not paying for the channel to get that.

And most FSU fans aren't even as interested in basketball as I am. Most fans of all schools are incredibly casual.

Ask yourself this...if there were 5 million plus ACC fans willing to pay $120 per year for ACC programming...more than they pay for Netflix...why are there all of about 30 posters on this board?

Sure, you can find active boards for individual teams, but the vast majority of those don't give a damn about anything other than one or two sports for their particular team.

Again...WWE network + free pay per views = 1 Million subscribers. Hulu = 6 million subscribers. UFC Fight Pass = <1 million subscribers.

Keep in mind that WWE Monday night Raw draws nearly Duke-Carolina basketball-level ratings virtually every week. Very few ACC football games top Raw ratings.

But yep, the ACC network is definitely going to get 500% more subscribers than the WWE network, so that GT fans can watch BC-Virginia field hockey and the Jamie Dixon show.

Come on, you're not even using the slightest amount of reason.

(06-01-2015 02:20 PM)nzmorange Wrote:  I think that many confuse revenue with profit. I'm not anywhere close to being as bullish as many on here are about conference networks. I think that they're a plus, but generally only a mild plus. I don't see any game-changing value adds, and I have yet to hear anyone make a compelling argument to the contrary.

I suppose we will get a network, but I think that will primarily be because the presence of an ACCN will increase Swofford's job security. If the market sours on networks, everyone will get hit and Seofford won't look any worse than the next guy. If the market takes off, then Swofford will get credit for the success. From Swofford's perspective, it's a win-tie v a win-loss. That's a no brainer.

I'm with you...if ESPN works up some deal that generates $5M+ per year...then by all means. But signing an additional 20 YEARS with ESPN like the SEC did? But for a couple million extra dollars a year?

No thanks. I hope it takes as long as it takes. The more desperate the ACC is, the less leverage it has. The answer to a bad deal is not to reup the bad deal. If ESPN does want to lock up the ACC until 2035 too, they have to come up with some real money, network or not.

At the very least the ACC shouldn't cut a deal before the B1G deal, and if it was up to me, I'd like to see where the PAC Nets are two years from now. Being in a hurry is not our friend here.

IMO, this is a case of scratch and claw and leverage every possible advantage you can think of just to keep it CLOSE.

(06-01-2015 02:42 PM)Lou_C Wrote:  

(06-01-2015 12:48 PM)GTFletch Wrote:  

(06-01-2015 11:27 AM)Lou_C Wrote:  

(06-01-2015 10:08 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  

(06-01-2015 08:55 AM)Lou_C Wrote:  It took the WWE network almost a year to hit 1 million subscribers. You know, one of the most consistently highly rated products on cable? And in addition, people with the WWE network get PPVs for free...so for hardcore fans who buy PPVs, it actually net costs them nothing.

Hulu, at $7.99 a month, has like 6-7 million subscribers.

It will NOT be easy for the ACC to land 5 million subscribers at $10/mo year round.

Holding ONE million subscribers year round within the first couple years would be a miracle. More [b]likely you're looking at a peak of MAYBE a million during basketball season[/b] at best, and in the low hundred thousands in the off-season.

If there were 5 million+ people willing to watch, let alone pay $10/mo for baseball, womens' basketball, lacrosse, soccer, volleyball etc, that stuff would already be all over TV now. But nobody watches that stuff when it is on for free on the cable package they already pay for. The number who will slap down $10/mo for it is miniscule.

I'm all for a digital supplement being made available to cordcutters and alternative delivery options, but the ACC is not going to make major bank in the short term by going broadband only a-la-cart. If that's what the ACC ends up with, then we've lost already.

Good numbers, Lou, but I wonder if you did the math before proclaiming digital a lost cause? Let's look at 1 million subscribers (average) X $10/mo.

1M X $10/month X 12 months/year = $120M/year
per team: $120M/year / 15 shares (ACC and/or ND gets one) = $8M/year

That's pretty close to what the SEC Network is paying.

No doubt, there are EASIER ways to get money:
1) Over-the-air, which relies on huge audiences and selling advertisements
2) Cable channel, which relies on subscriptions (and needs to be on as low a tier as possible).

And you could argue that 1M Digital subscribers is too many... but I'm not so sure. Let's say it's only 1 million during football and basketball seasons, but drops to 100,000 the rest of the year - that's still at least 7 months of the year at 1M... what if they pay $15/month? Now the math is

1M X $15/month X 7 months/year = $105M/year
plus 0.1M x $15 x 5 months = $7.5M/year
annual total = $112.5M/15 shares = $7.5M/year

Which, again, is not unrealistic IMHO. Also, how valuable would advertising be for such a targeted market?

No, I certainly didn't run the numbers, I was mainly responding to the 5 million suggestion, or suggestions people frequently throw out there that the ACC could easily get 5 or 10 million subscribers because of the footprint. And of course, there are costs for everything...

But if half a million subscribers nets $4M per team...which is probably the bare minimum you would need to avoid having the network declared dead on arrival in the media...eh, it's somewhat intriguing.

I have no idea of course if half a million is realistic or not...that's still an awful lot of hardcore ACC Olympic sports fans, but it at least seems theoretically plausible.

Of course, the ACC can't "go it alone" anyway because we're tied to ESPN, but it's conceivable that ESPN would want to do something in this arena as a step toward the future, I don't know.

I still think from an exposure standpoint it's much better to be on a channel people can flip to, and 85% of people are still getting their programming through cable, but it's interesting.

I wonder if there could be a hybrid model in play...let's say there's an ESPN ACC Network and the carriage rate is set at, I don't know, half that of the SEC network, to make for a fairly easy carriage negotiation.

But then there is a digital supplement that can be purchased standalone (like HBO Now) for $6 a month or something. And that ACC Now subscription will be available to anyone whether you have cable or not. And it would not only simulcast all the programming of the ACC Network, but it would also contain the all time digital library of the ACC. The ACC Now app could also have multiple streams of programming, not just what the ACC Network is showing.

So you would have ACC Now available to cord cutters, and anyone whose cable system doesn't pick it up. But it would also be available to people who do get the ACC Network, but do want more content, both live and archived.

You might really have something there...I mean bandwidth/storage aside, an ACC Now could really provide nearly unlimited school specific content, which would really up the likelihood that someone who's primarily a fan of one school (which is the vast majority of people) would find value there.

Raycom is deep into the digital space, and perhaps that could be leveraged against the startup and management costs of the digital component. Raycom certainly has the resources and ability to produce additional streams beyond what ESPN might choose for the ACC Network broadcasts. Perhaps Raycom could incur the startup costs in return for being the provider of choice for the digital platform?

Just spitballing, but I would be very intrigued by that model, more so that just jumping 100% into the WWE model. It would be an excellent bridge to the future.

OK Lou... I will try and crack the 5million nut for ya....

How many loyal ND alumni are out in the US who would pay $10 a month?
How many loyal Cuse fans are there?
Duke?
UNC?
FSU?
Maimi?


Ok... SO then how many local sports bars close to the Universities in everytown that houses an ACC school is there??

SO lets say that ND, only brought 1 M subscribers worldwide ( I think that number is low since the great BYU has 5 million that is always spoken about)

Cuse, DUKE, UNC, bring in 500 K

So before I get to the Wake Forest of the ACC I am sitting at 2.5 Million....
Without adding in UofL, FSU Miami and BC, VT or GT...

The ACC can get 5M quick....the issue isn't that, the issue is how does the ACC brand grow outside of the 5M dedicated and that means that the 24/7 ACC channel has to be quality.. Better to go slow then to hurry and do a LHN...

The answer to that is...very few (relatively speaking) on all points.

All those Syracuse fans...how much Syracuse content do you think there is going to be on a network? Three basketball games? Two football games? Lacrosse?

I get that lacrosse is "popular" at some ACC schools. But you guys are way, way overestimating how willing people are to drop $120 per year.

Syracuse leads the nation in lacrosse attendance with about 4k people a game. The finals of the lacrosse national championship drew all of 300k viewers.

None of those FSU or Clemson or NC State fans give two craps about Syracuse lacrosse, or UNC girls soccer.

And those Syracuse fans? They don't care about FSU baseball, or Notre Dame water polo.

If we had access to the ESPN3 numbers it would tell the tale I'm sure...I bet women's softball games etc, available now for FREE regularly fail to crack 10k viewers.

I wouldn't subscribe for $10 a month. I'm a huge FSU fan...but I don't care about every sport every team in the ACC plays...I care about hardly any of them. I'll find a way to watch the one FSU football game on the channel, and MAYBE subscribe to basketball season depending on how many FSU games are on. I might watch FSU baseball from time to time if I had the channel, but I'm not paying for the channel to get that.

And most FSU fans aren't even as interested in basketball as I am. Most fans of all schools are incredibly casual.

Ask yourself this...if there were 5 million plus ACC fans willing to pay $120 per year for ACC programming...more than they pay for Netflix...why are there all of about 30 posters on this board?

Sure, you can find active boards for individual teams, but the vast majority of those don't give a damn about anything other than one or two sports for their particular team.

Again...WWE network + free pay per views = 1 Million subscribers. Hulu = 6 million subscribers. UFC Fight Pass = <1 million subscribers.

Keep in mind that WWE Monday night Raw draws nearly Duke-Carolina basketball-level ratings virtually every week. Very few ACC football games top Raw ratings.

But yep, the ACC network is definitely going to get 500% more subscribers than the WWE network, so that GT fans can watch BC-Virginia field hockey and the Jamie Dixon show.

Come on, you're not even using the slightest amount of reason.

Monday Night Raw wins head to head ratings battles with Monday Night Football. You hit the nail on the head with this post. Well done, sir.

(06-01-2015 02:42 PM)Lou_C Wrote:  Ask yourself this...if there were 5 million plus ACC fans willing to pay $120 per year for ACC programming...more than they pay for Netflix...why are there all of about 30 posters on this board?

Because there are several other avenues for ACC fans to express themselves...? Warchant? Inside Carolina? Pack Pride? StingTalk? Other non-Scout affiliated boards?

(06-01-2015 02:51 PM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  IMO, this is a case of scratch and claw and leverage every possible advantage you can think of just to keep it CLOSE.

I agree with that...if it really keeps you CLOSE. If it puts you within 85-90% of the $31M the SEC just distributed? Probably go for it. If it puts you within that of the new B1G deal? Definitely. Like you said, close.

If it bumps ACC up from $22 to $23.5 million a year, and locks them up with ESPN and an ESPN owned network until 2035? Sorry, that's not close in my book. If it's not enough money significantly cut the gap and make the difference relatively negligible, then it's NOT worth giving up every bit of leverage you might have.

In any event, whatever money ESPN is able to make off an ACC network, it's ultimately negligible to ESPN. Ultimately, they paid the SEC $6M this year for their network...they probably made about the same. Not ultimately a make or break amount of money for ESPN.

You know what IS a huge freaking deal? The fact that the SEC is married to ESPN for basically the remaining working life of any executive level person over there right now. They will NOT be in the position they are in with the B1G now with ESPN. Not in two years, not in five years, not in 10 or even 15 years. They will not be sitting on an atomic bomb of rights fees with Fox ready to push the button.

Frankly, for as much hype is the SEC Network's success, and it is a rousing success, and $6M is awesome. But my bet is that simply extending the ESPN contract out to 2034 would have been worth an extra $6M. If you don't think that ESPN got their pound of flesh from the SEC in return for their precious network, you're nuts.

Look how much shine came off the SEC's TV deal from 2008 by 2012 (or the ACC's 2009 deal). Now their deal doesn't come up again for a full two decades...it's literally the longest rights term in sports.

Who do you think that favors...ESPN or the SEC?

For the ACC to do the same, it's got to be game changing money in my opinion. If the new ACC network deal puts us $1-$2M ahead of the PAC and Big 12...how do you think it will measure up in 2023 when the PAC and Big 12 rights come back up, and the ACC still has a decade to go on their deal.

Close is good enough. Just a little closER should not be. Despite the pressure, the ACC has to hold tight long enough to either get REALLY paid, or ride it out until they can be.

(06-01-2015 03:24 PM)ecuacc4ever Wrote:  

(06-01-2015 02:42 PM)Lou_C Wrote:  Ask yourself this...if there were 5 million plus ACC fans willing to pay $120 per year for ACC programming...more than they pay for Netflix...why are there all of about 30 posters on this board?

Because there are several other avenues for ACC fans to express themselves...? Warchant? Inside Carolina? Pack Pride? StingTalk? Other non-Scout affiliated boards?

Exactly...and there won't be anywhere nearly enough content from any one school to justify $120 a year for 99% people. That's kind of the point...people care about their school. And how many are posting about anything but football or basketball?

They might check out an ACC Network if it's on their cable...but to actively pay $10/mo...it is very, very hard to get people to do that. Seriously, you really think the ACC is much more popular than the WWE, and about as attractive as Hulu?

(06-01-2015 03:29 PM)Lou_C Wrote:  

(06-01-2015 03:24 PM)ecuacc4ever Wrote:  

(06-01-2015 02:42 PM)Lou_C Wrote:  Ask yourself this...if there were 5 million plus ACC fans willing to pay $120 per year for ACC programming...more than they pay for Netflix...why are there all of about 30 posters on this board?

Because there are several other avenues for ACC fans to express themselves...? Warchant? Inside Carolina? Pack Pride? StingTalk? Other non-Scout affiliated boards?

Exactly...and there won't be anywhere nearly enough content from any one school to justify $120 a year for 99% people. That's kind of the point...people care about their school. And how many are posting about anything but football or basketball?

They might check out an ACC Network if it's on their cable...but to actively pay $10/mo...it is very, very hard to get people to do that. Seriously, you really think the ACC is much more popular than the WWE, and about as attractive as Hulu?

I think you make a good point..... Nationwide the ACC is not more popular than the WWE....

I also think the 24/7 channel has to have quality programing or it can become another LHN/PAC network real quick....

I do think a ACCN is comng, I have no clue the Format/Platform/Broadcast, but I do know that they will only get one chance at a launch and they need to make it count..

What is the projected ACC distribution?

I'm guessing ~17-18 for TV, ~2-3 for non-football post season + football CCG ~6-7 for bowls (including the OB).

That totals ~25-26 per school.

(06-01-2015 04:00 PM)nzmorange Wrote:  What is the projected ACC distribution?

I'm guessing ~17-18 for TV, ~2-3 for non-football post season + football CCG ~6-7 for bowls (including the OB).

That totals ~25-26 per school.

I think it's going to be a little less than that. $21-23M per school, depending on adjustments for postseason travel. David Teel tweeted that FSU should be in the low $20s, and he's probably the best to know, but that was based on earlier projections.

If the ACC did get $25-$26M per school, versus $31M for the SEC, that's not really something to get worked up about relative the athletic budgets of SEC schools.

But I think it will be a bit less than that, and it will potentially be worse next year with the bowl setup being less favorable to the ACC this season.

(06-01-2015 01:52 PM)Marge Schott Wrote:  

(06-01-2015 10:08 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  1M X $10/month X 12 months/year = $120M/year
per team: $120M/year / 15 shares (ACC and/or ND gets one) = $8M/year

That's pretty close to what the SEC Network is paying.

No doubt, there are EASIER ways to get money:
1) Over-the-air, which relies on huge audiences and selling advertisements
2) Cable channel, which relies on subscriptions (and needs to be on as low a tier as possible).

And you could argue that 1M Digital subscribers is too many... but I'm not so sure. Let's say it's only 1 million during football and basketball seasons, but drops to 100,000 the rest of the year - that's still at least 7 months of the year at 1M... what if they pay $15/month? Now the math is

1M X $15/month X 7 months/year = $105M/year
plus 0.1M x $15 x 5 months = $7.5M/year
annual total = $112.5M/15 shares = $7.5M/year

Which, again, is not unrealistic IMHO. Also, how valuable would advertising be for such a targeted market?

You forgot to pay espn half of the profit. They definitely aren't going to be left out of the revenue making on any possible accn. So if there were zero costs at 1m subscribers and $10/month, it'd be $4 mil/school. And by all accounts it should probably divided by 16, conservatively, since the acc had always taken an equal cut.

But there will also obviously be costs, both in operating costs and initial start up and rights buy back. The first year would do well to just break even at that point.

And if you charge someone $15/month for something big ten/sec fans essentially get free for purchasing cable/satellite, you're not going to hit your optimal subscriber levels. I really don't think people are going to pay that much for an online-only version of a network.

Swofford literally said he sacrificed revenue for more "visibility" with the last deal. What visibility is an online-only network going to get? You're not going to walk into many sports bars and see the accn streaming from a computer. Recruits aren't going to hang out and watch games on their phone when they could just flip on the telly.

People rarely watch Fox sports one and that's available in most American households . How is that going to translate for online content? How much can you really charge in advertising fees when - if you have 1 mil total subscribers - no more than 500k people are watching any single event? Compared to viewers for btn/secn? (Admittedly, I don't know what their average viewer numbers are.)

Yes and NO... If the ACCN was only available online I see your point, what happens if it is On-Line and then also on Direct TV and you can pay to have it added like the regional sports package??

I think if they went with a digital launch it would have to be something like this, because there is a generational gap in regards to customers and on-line technology...for example a 40-50 something ACC fan may not want to mess with ON-line streaming but would want to pay for an extra package on his direct TV bill..

It will be interesting to see how the ACCN launches...

Link

http://louisvillesportslive.net/is-an-ac...e-horizon/