Haven’t had much traction discussing this one NNN, but I think this is a much much bigger deal than our fans seem to realize:
On a much smaller scale though, the 2015 season could be a pivotal one for Conference USA. The conference has three existing media rights deals set to expire at the end of the 2015-2016 seasons for football and basketball, which means it needs to come on strong as the negotiating is ongoing. And this is not talking about on the field or court. [i][b]Conference USA needs to show up in the TV ratings[/b][/i].
Conference USA has a five-year deal with FOX Sports, a six-year basketball contract with CBS Sports expiring in the coming year. The conference also has the rights to the Conference USA football championship game having a five-year contract with ESPN expiring. A year after seeing Marshall fall a few steps shy of representing the conference in the New Years Six line-up, Conference USA will hope this upcoming football season provides a strong case to cash in on the next round of media deals.
The realignment craze ripped some of the conference’s strongest and more well-known programs from it over the years, from Louisville and Cincinnati to East Carolina and Tulsa. Realignment has caused the conference to bank on the long-term future development of some young or upcoming programs like Old Dominion, Charlotte, FAU, FIU, UTSA and Western Kentucky, but it may need those programs to grow up quickly. The timing is extra dicey with the UAB saga continuing to unfold.
The American Athletic Conference and Mountain West Conference are each locked into contracts valued at over $100 million for the next few years. The MAC is right in that same boat for an even longer stretch (and is getting some real estate on a new network this fall). Conference USA is due close to $130 million between football and basketball deals in the coming year, but if it is going to stay in the same territory as its other Group of Five conferences and not downgrade to a media presence similar to the Sun Belt Conference, now is the time to rally together and bring in the best TV ratings possible if a new deal is not made final before conference media days this summer or before the first kickoff of the season.
So many people are switching to streaming and cutting cable. I wonder what the future holds for all the monies from the networks as cable television’s impending death (or as many people are predicting). The landscape is always changing. The future is difficult to predict. And often unintended consequences occur. But, it seems to me that if the landscape changes as quickly as many people are predicting, we may need our own pay network, as least to hedge our position. But, perhaps that is what the American Sports network is about.
Our own pay network? That would be a total failure. We have people on this board that won’t support the program financially - no oe do we get enough average fan dollars to make that work. Now if we hook up with something like ASN then that could work.
One of the hurdles in the pending Charter/Time Warner Cable deal is push-back from Netflix because Charter is exploring plans to offer a streaming service that would compete with Netflix. It would be a mistake to think that cable companies are just going to turn out the lights and call it a day. They already have a lot of the technology and infrastructure; relationships with the customers and other products in their homes (now you see why they push bundling so hard); and the ability to buy market share if they want to. We may not call it cable anymore, but these companies are likely to still be selling us content regardless of the delivery channel. At least this is what I think.
One of the hurdles in the pending Charter/Time Warner Cable deal is push-back from Netflix because Charter is exploring plans to offer a streaming service that would compete with Netflix. It would be a mistake to think that cable companies are just going to turn out the lights and call it a day. They already have a lot of the technology and infrastructure; relationships with the customers and other products in their homes (now you see why they push bundling so hard); and the ability to buy market share if they want to. We may not call it cable anymore, but these companies are likely to still be selling us content regardless of the delivery channel. At least this is what I think.[/quote]Yep, cable companies aren’t just going away. They have too much money to re-invent themselves in a changing market.
Ultimately, I think what will happen is people will pay around the same they do now for less choice, but much higher quality content. Netflix, AMC, and HBO are showing that there is huge demand for QUALITY product. We’ll see terrible channels fold and those committed to producing high quality shows thrive.
and some ASN numbers for comparison with the big nets.
Alabama A&M at UAB 408,300
FIU at UAB 268,600
UNT at UAB 213,800
UAB at FAU 314,500
LA Tech at UAB 456,000
Marshall at UAB 255,000 (limited availability. 200,000 from Birmingham market alone)
UAB at USM 397,000
[quote=“UABlazin, post:11, topic:29639”]and some ASN numbers for comparison with the big nets.
Alabama A&M at UAB 408,300
FIU at UAB 268,600
UNT at UAB 213,800
UAB at FAU 314,500
LA Tech at UAB 456,000
Marshall at UAB 255,000 (limited availability. 200,000 from Birmingham market alone)
UAB at USM 397,000[/quote]ASN is a really solid option if they can secure more primary channels instead of the crappy sub-channels they have in many markets.
In Charlotte, we don’t have an official ASN station, but our local CW affiliate picks up most of their broadcasts.
[quote=“UABlazin, post:13, topic:29639”]The ratings drop to about nothing on those sub-channels. The difference was very stark.
UAB is lucky in regards to ASN. Sinclair owns 3 Birmingham stations and 2 of them showed UAB sporting events last year.[/quote]With numbers like that in Birmingham, I have to imagine ASN won’t have much trouble selling ad space in that market next year.
But f you want live sports, you still gotta go through cable/satellite TV.
The real key is to get big enough to have your own 24/7 cable channel (SEC Network, Big Ten Network, etc.) but CUSA isn’t nearly popular enough to warrant that sort of deal. I’ve read that the ACC will even have trouble pulling it off if they ever do it.
I don’t know if we should be too worried too much about our next tv deal though. All these new sports networks still need to fill programming to compete with ESPN. But we’ll see if we get the same amount of money this time around.
New C-USA TV contract: Outgoing Conference USA commissioner Britton Banowsky took questions from the media during media day Wednesday too.
The league’s current television contract with Fox and the American Sports Network will expire in June 2016. Banowsky, who will stay in his current role until his replacement is hired, said he expects the new deal to be announced “by the middle” of the upcoming academic year (2015-16).
“We have a team that’s working on it,” he said. “We have an agency out of Raleigh (North Carolina) that does these things. They’re in discussions with all of our TV partners, and we’re starting tor get some structure around (the new contract).”
Banowsky also didn’t rule out the possibility of a new TV partner, such as ESPN, coming on board with C-USA either.
