Nomally there are 13 weeks in a college football season excluding conference championship week. So IMO the conference should strive for 7 home games to televise per week.

Therefore, one "package" would be 13 games or one game per week to be broadcast

The schools in the conference need to average 7 games per year for budgetary reasons so given that the average amount of conference home contests will be 4.5 by definition schools must average 2.5 home games non-conference.

Per the math the conference will only average 7 away games against non-conference opponents and those games will almost certainly be return games against P5 schools as the league has committed to play one P5 pet year.

So total inventory of home games (4.5 + 2.5) * 14 = 98

Given a 13 week season 98/13 =7 remainder 7.
So as I see it the league has seven 13 game packages to sell.

There would obviously need to be a shift in philosophy by moving some non-conference home games to later in the season to not cluster additional inventory at the beginning of the season & making sure the bye weeks are spread out... but those are easy adjustments especially if the non-conference opponents are rivalry games i.e. Iowa v Iowa State.

With 3 remaining packages to sell (Fox/FS1/BTN are set) and cord cutting in full effect I think the conference should go on a primarily OTA model with ESPN, FS1 & BTN being the exception to the model. Each package should yield at least 100 million given the FOX bid.

Package Entity
2.....Fox/FS1 (already in for 250 Million )
1.....NBC
1.....CBS
1.....ABC/ESPN National coverage model
2.....BTN plus any additional inventory

Obviously you have to keep ESPN in the fold and may give them a discount but given my math we have 3 more packages to sell excluding hoops which should net another 250-300 million.

Of course this is a wild azz guess but using the FOX bid as a model and throwing in my conjecture. .. 12.5 football games are worth 100 million and 50 basketball games are worth 50 million. Or put another way football is 8 times more valuable than basketball. So if that estimate holds another 50 million for 50 more hoops games per year in addition to the 250-300 million football should earn for the remaining packages... the B1G should net 550-600 million per year for tier 1 rights alone.
What do you all think? Reasonable?

I think being OTA for 3 to 4 games per week would be awesome in addition to the obscene revenue estimates.

NBC should be able to work around Notre Dame.
CBS would be tougher as the SEC would have first dibbs

However given history both CBS & NBC broadcast their primary properties at 3:30 EST, so in my guesstimate both CBS and NBC would be early evening to night games for B1G games with a little more flexibility with NBC when Notre Dame is on the road.

I think FOX & ABC/ESPN Would be our 3:30 EST games . And while FOX would be nationwide OTA. I'd expect ABC/ESPN to continue with OTA regionally and ESPN for markets bot covered OTA as they do now.

The rub is who gets what games. I think for our OTA partners there should be either super attractive OOC games or at least conference games from which they can choose. With that said I think throughout the season there should be at least 3 conference games every week in order to make sure there are meaningful games that will draw interest.

There will need to be some sort of mechanism to choose from round-robin or open bidding process or something... but that process will have to be fair and take into account that BTN requires 1 conference and 1 non-conference game to be televised per year.

The crazy part of this is that if and when expansion comes at bare minimum prorata distributions wil be expected but with increased BTN revenues always in play and the my model of one package being worth roughly 100 million in football... every two teams we add is worth one more package because of all of the additional content.

It makes you wonder if the content to stay where they are programs of Texas, Carolina, Virginia, Georgia Tech, Florida State, & Notre Dame may just initiate a phone call to Chicago.

I like the logic and agree that OTA should be an integral part going forward.

I don't think the issue is money in regards to expansion. Yes, there would be considerable more money for certain schools if they joined the B1G but I don't believe that's a reason without substantial other motivation. It seems most of the schools that moved had money PLUS something else, and if you go down the list you about guess the area of the something else.

If it were purely money and academic prestige why not start scoping out Ivy League schools. I think Harvard, Princeton and Yale might look interesting if positioned right LOL.

It's so recent that expansion has happened, I think after the can is kicked down the block a few years the schools you listed might be a match. Right now from top to bottom for B1G or schools listed I don't see obvious PLUS something else that overcomes distance, culture, like mindedness, or big/small fish in big/small pond issues.

Nice work and commendable job! I disagree with your conclusions though.

You seem to be placing each school (and match up) as equal to all the others. Basing it off of the Fox alleged agreement, and assuming they have the first picks weekly, I don't see how the other networks pay the same for a lesser product. I guess what you'd need to do is figure out the drop off from the top two games and pro rate that from the rate of pay that Fox is paying, less the basketball share. I don't have time to do it now (or the ability) and I'm not even sure you can do an apples to apples comparison but I would find it hard to believe that there is another network out there as desperate as Fox is/was and has the resources to pony up.

(06-02-2016 04:36 PM)GE and MTS Wrote:  Nice work and commendable job! I disagree with your conclusions though.

You seem to be placing each school (and match up) as equal to all the others. Basing it off of the Fox alleged agreement, and assuming they have the first picks weekly, I don't see how the other networks pay the same for a lesser product. I guess what you'd need to do is figure out the drop off from the top two games and pro rate that from the rate of pay that Fox is paying, less the basketball share. I don't have time to do it now (or the ability) and I'm not even sure you can do an apples to apples comparison but I would find it hard to believe that there is another network out there as desperate as Fox is/was and has the resources to pony up.

I don't have any other reference and Fox has set the market. I agree that further down the line the games may not be as valuable but i truly believe that the exposure is more valuable on CBS & NBC. So even if those packages go for 50-75 million it would be worth it.

(06-02-2016 07:34 PM)Big Ron Buckeye Wrote:  

(06-02-2016 04:36 PM)GE and MTS Wrote:  Nice work and commendable job! I disagree with your conclusions though.

You seem to be placing each school (and match up) as equal to all the others. Basing it off of the Fox alleged agreement, and assuming they have the first picks weekly, I don't see how the other networks pay the same for a lesser product. I guess what you'd need to do is figure out the drop off from the top two games and pro rate that from the rate of pay that Fox is paying, less the basketball share. I don't have time to do it now (or the ability) and I'm not even sure you can do an apples to apples comparison but I would find it hard to believe that there is another network out there as desperate as Fox is/was and has the resources to pony up.

I don't have any other reference and Fox has set the market. I agree that further down the line the games may not be as valuable but i truly believe that the exposure is more valuable on CBS & NBC. So even if those packages go for 50-75 million it would be worth it.

Fair enough. As a Big Ten fan, I hope you are right. At $550 million per year, that's just over $39 million per school (not including a cut to the "Big Ten"). That's before payouts for postseason and such. I just don't think NBC and CBS would pay a premium price for anything less than a premium game. They would probably have better luck with ratings running reruns of old shows if the price would be for OTA and not channels like NBS Sports.

(06-02-2016 02:13 PM)Strut Wrote:  I like the logic and agree that OTA should be an integral part going forward.

I don't think the issue is money in regards to expansion. Yes, there would be considerable more money for certain schools if they joined the B1G but I don't believe that's a reason without substantial other motivation. It seems most of the schools that moved had money PLUS something else, and if you go down the list you about guess the area of the something else.

If it were purely money and academic prestige why not start scoping out Ivy League schools. I think Harvard, Princeton and Yale might look interesting if positioned right LOL.

It's so recent that expansion has happened, I think after the can is kicked down the block a few years the schools you listed might be a match. Right now from top to bottom for B1G or schools listed I don't see obvious PLUS something else that overcomes distance, culture, like mindedness, or big/small fish in big/small pond issues.

One thing I like about the B1G is the calculated moves we have made with regard to membership. One of the thngs I remember Delany discussing since the Nebraska addition is that we are expanding with a 90-100 year horizon. I like expansion as a general topic as much as the next guy but some of the ideas are pie in the sky and not necessarily sustainable over the long haul.
Texas comes to mind for me as a real stretch primarily because of geography. If we can't build a bridge to Texas to keep them happy... who is to say they won't leave umpteen years down the road for another conference more geographically suitable.
We have to be able to reach a critical mass of interest in a region to make it work for the members long term. If not for the money I think Nebraska might have visions of an old Big 8. If an expansion to the southeast is to work, I honestly think you have to take Duke even if they are not as profitable as you want and maybe Clemson even though they are not AAU.
The dearth of population in the plains makes expansion to the west harder so the focus IMO should be getting into a place that makes the B1G South feel like a more academically elite ACC (they are pretty elite anyway, but you get the point).

Ideally, Texas, UVA, UNC, Duke, Georgia Tech, & Florida State would be perfect to get the conference to 20. However, Texas may go independent or do some other Texas-like move that makes them a non-option. The wingman IMO should be Clemson as their location & presence between Atlanta and Charlotte along with history with UVA, DUKE, & UNC would help keep things familiar.

We know Delany wants the growing South. The ACC old guard comes as a package deal IMO. Georgia Tech sits in the heart of the South, Texas and Florida State sit in the second and third most populous states in the union. I don't think you can add just UVA & UNC, they would feel out of place unless you brought more schools. And maybe just maybe Texas, even though on an island, would like a cultural and academic B1G South enough to join up.