Hurtlocker

Had you told me over a decade ago that when we were in the infant realignment posts doing flightware checks for the Pac 16 rumors, that Texas State would potentially join the Pac in 2025 it would have blown my mind. That was not something I am not sure anyone mapped out and I'm pretty sure we mapped everything out including Prestige Worldwide. Yet here we are.

That's basically my point. Prior the argument was they were incapable to pull 2ms on their own because every major slot was Texas or OU vs someone. Those Fox/ABC slots were always filled by and pulled from the big boys. Now they have to fill them with someone else and they have to prove they can get 2m+ consistently. A few will hit 1m, some will hit 3m, but the count is how many 2ms can you rack up. They don't need every game to be killer, if they can average 1-2 per week, they're golden. They don't have the properties to get to 6m, that's not their role. Oregon and Washington and Wisconsin and Clemson and Miami and Ole Miss doesn't get there alone either, they need to play USC or Ohio State or Michigan or Florida or Georgia or Alabama to sniff that, just like the Big 12 teams needed to play Texas or Oklahoma to get there. And, for them it doesn't matter the time slots, the B12 has to prove is they can produce in the ones they're placed, they're on a 4-year test, be it Friday, late night, Fox, ESPN, whatever. Through three weeks the numbers show they are capable, sustainable is another thing all together. And agree, they need to get on the preseason match up wagon, their W1 is terrible. That's all that's floating the ACC at the moment are a few big games in week 1, the rest is a lot of steamers. They more they show they can produce the more TV will match them up. I think we're talking different things on Colorado. I never said they could build a contract off them, I said, right now, they're the belle of the Q rating ball. There is no product in CFB driving more PR and more casual eyeballs for basically nothing, than Colorado, they're out Oregoning Oregon. I'm not sure if it's totally Prime, like people love to hate various personalities, or if it is the NIL situation, but they are pulling stupid numbers in games they have no reason pulling. They are pulling numbers against properties the biggest programs aren't even doing. Sustainable? No idea. what if Prime does stay for a decade, what if he leaves and they get someone normal, but they average 9.5 wins a year like the early 90s, what if he leaves and they go back to sucksville? What would it look like if he stayed and they actually won? Way too many variables. They are doing something that I can't really find a historic comparison to, but it's not nothing. They're kind of like the Wrexham of CFB right now and there is no way to guess what 4 years from now will look like. If you asked me last year, I would have said the bubble already burst, but it hasn't. Watch FX give them their own show.

Yeah shit games are still shit games. And most you don't see because they aren't rated on the streaming or conference channels, besides BTN, but that gives a hint. The bulk of the games fall in the 50-500k range, that's why they package them on channel that pay per month.

Colorado has stupid numbers, only two teams match them this season: Georgia and ND. They're still the belle of the ball whether its Prime or whatever. The B12 has had far more respectable numbers so far than expected overall. The concern prior to this year was could they pull 2m+ games without Texas or OU in them. If you remember how they laid them out in previous years, the big slots were always Texas or OU vs someone else, so there weren't a lot of opportunities to tell. I think what we're seeing is you're not going to see big brand 6m+ games that you see from the Michigan or Texas' of the world, but the two mill plus games are definitely not only achievable, but should be expected often, which should help their revenue numbers going forward. In realignment I did a quick count of teams in conferences who played in 2m games this season: https://www.surlyhorns.com/board/topic/25-realignment-talk-not-going-away/?do=findComment&comment=6485966 Which doesn't copy over well, so here it is again - Week 4 data, #p4 teams in 2m+ audience games: ND - 3 ACC - 7 B1G - 16 B12 - 14 SEC - 24 Fun Facts: 85% of the ACC's games on this list occurred in weeks 0/1. The only one after was Tennessee/NCSt Ohio State/Marshal drew 3.96m, Clemson/NCSt ended up with 1.95m. Even Florida/MSU drew 2.64m on ESPN in the same slot Fox is winning on Fridays. Kstate/Arizona drew 2.7m while Ill/Nebraska going to overtime punched up to 4.2m. I think ESPN only had two 2m+ Friday games for the entire regular season last year (Kstate/OkSt and Colorado/Stanford), Fox has two in their first two outings. Expect them to market this more. There have been eight 6m+ games so far, all involve the big boys: Week 1 - Miami/Florida - 6.35m Week 1 - Clemson/Georgia - 7.58m Week 1 - ND/A&M - 7.62M Week 1 - USC/LSU - 8.62m Week 2 - Texas/Michigan - 9.2m Week 3 - Georgia/Kentucky - 6.6m Week 4 - Tenn/OU - 6.27m Week 4 - USC/Michigan - 6.32m

Just when I thought realignment couldn't get dumber. Instead of merging to 13 and adding someone like North Texas or UTSA or Texas State to grow to 16 and keep all the money in their war chest to invest, they're just going to pass it around, break into two conferences smaller than 8, need to add someone to get to 8, and be worth less in the long run.

Update with Week 4 data, 2m+ audience games: ND - 3 ACC - 7 B1G - 16 B12 - 14 SEC - 24 Fun Facts: 85% of the ACC's games on this list occurred in weeks 0/1. The only one after was Tennessee/NCSt Ohio State/Marshal drew 3.96m, Clemson/NCSt ended up with 1.95m. Even Florida/MSU drew 2.64m on ESPN in the same slot Fox is winning on Fridays. Kstate/Arizona drew 2.7m while Ill/Nebraska going to overtime punched up to 4.2m. I think ESPN only had two 2m+ Friday games for the entire regular season last year (Kstate/OkSt and Colorado/Stanford), Fox has two in their first two outings. Expect them to market this more. There have been eight 6m+ games so far, all involve the big boys: Week 1 - Miami/Florida - 6.35m Week 1 - Clemson/Georgia - 7.58m Week 1 - ND/A&M - 7.62M Week 1 - USC/LSU - 8.62m Week 2 - Texas/Michigan - 9.2m Week 3 - Georgia/Kentucky - 6.6m Week 4 - Tenn/OU - 6.27m Week 4 - USC/Michigan - 6.32m

Well secondary was more a response to someone that would say "but did you consider so and so" and I would say "I did, but they're secondary". Oregon is not USC. Auburn is not Alabama. They're not top...they're secondary. If someone starts to wax poetic about how Indiana or Iowa or Mississippi State is somehow different than Colorado or Iowa State or Oklahoma State, I am not sure what to say. I haven't even seen anything to prove that its right. What I have seen, repeatedly, is if you're in the top 12, which really is the top 14 if you add FSU and Notre Dame (and FSU is realllllllly pushing it as I can almost prove they don't belong on that list), you matter. That's our La Bleu Bloods. If you are not, you are basically the same folding chair being moved around on the pool deck. When you're winning, you're moved closer to the pool, when you're not you're pushed back towards the shade. As I said, if 48 is the made-up magic number from 20 posts ago, 12 isn't the hard list, it's the 36, and the group is more alike than they are different. The only reason half are paid one thing and half are paid another is who is beating them. As for who comes off the board, it is a real interesting experiment right now, because prior to this year the argument was always none of these teams would rate at all without playing the top, but now they have to, so we'll see. We won't know without time, but currently Colorado is fleecing both Oregon and Auburn. Sure, its Prime, but its also Oregon and Auburn. Colorado pulled just shy of 5m viewers playing North Fucking Dakota State. Know who else pulled 4.75m playing an FCS? No one. The next highest G5 game is NIU beating ND and it is 3.93m. In Auburn's two rated games so far, they've totaled 1.8m. Totaled. Matter a fact, Auburn and Oregon's combined 4 game audience of 5m is needed to top that single game from Colorado, who then went on to pull an additional 9m viewers in its next two rated games. The only other teams with 14m viewers through 3 rated weeks are Georgia and Notre Dame. Colorado is out Oregoning Oregon. So we can argue it away with "flash in the pan", "he won't stay" or "it won't last", but at the moment if you're drafting for Q rating outside the top tier and you're not taking Colorado, you're not winning your league. They did this last year to with 4 wins. No other team does this, not even top brands. On top of that, in 3 weeks (still waiting for last week's as of this writing) we've seen 27 games with 2m or more in audience, P4 teams in those games: ND - 3 ACC - 7 B1G - 10 B12 - 10 SEC - 17 As stated, the SEC has the big hitters, the Big Ten has the money-making organization.

Yeah we've had a version of this debate dating back before realignment was getting started. The premise being how many blue bloods do you need to maintain the conference coffers. Originally the math said about 25% of the conference needed to be big hitters. We can argue about who exactly is the bluest of blue bloods or, Le Bleu Bloods, but for this convo let's just say biggest brands. The creation of the Big 12 and ACC, dissolving the SWC and Big East, moved it to this 25% camp to a state of equilibrium. The math changed though to get more bucks. The Big Ten has the benefit of having a far, far, far better business apparatus around its conference than the SEC and the two largest brands in the sport. The SEC has the benefit of more top brands overall: B1G Football: Top (28%) - Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, Nebraska, USC Secondary (17%) - Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin SEC Football: Top (44%) - Texas, Alabama, Georgia, LSU, Florida, Oklahoma, Tennessee Secondary (13%)- A&M, Auburn The ACC has diluted its brand percent to the point where I'm not sure it even matters any more. The Big 12 has gone the other direction and has all its value in secondary, but has a lot of it. As to the last point, which I think is Al's original point, is that after you get past that Top area, you're basically left with the Big 12/ACC. You can't really compare finances when Ole Miss get's paid $80m by the SEC and VTech gets $30m by the ACC. Who plays in the 2m+ games, the 4m+ games and the 8m+ games, that's your tiers. The top 12 schools are easy to figure out, the next 36 are waaaaaay harder.

The DMA helps, but success or brand helps more. The basketball team is paying off. How the hell is the football team so gawdawful? I mean if UCF can pull in 4* recruiting classes, after Florida, Florida State, and Miami get their pick, why can't you in Houston?

He's still pulling pretty good numbers for a mid team, including pulling over 3m against Colorado State. Wonder what it will look like once his son and Hunter are gone.

Also where the Big Fox noon game is, another suspect decision on their part. It will be interesting to see if the ABC NCSt/Clemson takes that noon spot and by how much.

How the hell is Oregon still in the Top 10 when they barely got past both Idaho and Boise?

Yeah I moved to Hulu Live this summer, added two premium channels, got the highest broadband package my provider offered, and it was still lower than my cable bill.

Edit: Fucked the reply and missed that it is supposed to be connected to the post on the NCAA's letter banning the QR code, which was funny enough in its own right, now its just clown show. The NCAA is all over the place on this. And I get the feeling it just hates Oklahoma State.

This isn't surprising at all. The Pac12Net couldn't get carriage, why would a different logo just get carriage? When they added Rutgers they put Ohio State and Michigan in market on BTN, Ohio State/Oregon is likely FOX, why would Comcast ante up for Idaho?

yeah, true, just sort of napkining the conversation. I just went and looked it up 10.48% is the going average of sports investment, which is why its booming.

Sports PE work different than Raid PE. They're pretty prevalent in the European market. Unlike raids they make their money more over time in either an equity stake appreciation, like buying into a team likely not a thing you can do in college, revenue sharing growth, operational improvements, media rights, and real estate development. Its not all quick slash and burn its mostly revenue growth, margin growth and multiple expansion. The rates they get out pace most long-term as sports investments have been wildly successful, largely rivaling AI to outpace the SP500. And, they can do what you suggest. Matter a fact, Sanky said the same thing. The question is how much. If the top number is $100m and the SEC is at $80m, then the work to get from $80 to $100 is a hard and likely not worth the investment because most of that investment was done in the 70s, 80s and 90s. The ACC and B12, however, are sitting at $40m because that work wasn't done. It can be bought though. So a PE could invest in increasing their $40 to $80-100 and taking a cut of that increase. Why would Kansas State care if they didn't get all of $100m if someone got them $80 and took $20? Granted, I kept that math simple for explanation purposes only please do not get into a "that won't happen" stuff. Hell what if the PE could only get the B12 to $80, but also dropped their expenses by half, or helped develop all the land around their sport venues to generate more game day revenues for their universities. This is kind of untapped so there are lots of places for PE to bring in their expertise to make money in the margins. Personally, I think the real PE money is sitting on the outside waiting for the big win, which is the complete liquidation of conferences. Even with all the dick stroking that is going on about media money in the Big Ten and SEC, those figures are likely undervalued by around 40% of the maximum the market will bear for one simple reason that the NFL has proven...they don't go to the market with all the inventory. Tradition is still holding on, but the PEs already are pushing proposals with numbers that are insane, but it requires all the teams, aligned, in one media package that one entity controls, schedules, negotiates and manages, much like the NFL.

Sports investment is more long-term investment. They're looking at 5% over 20 years instead of a huge hit quick by liquidating assets like a raiding strategy. They do this through a variety of means including bringing in partners, which they get a cut of, to handle various marketing, or merchandise, or broadcasting. Sports investment has been proven to be an extremely lucrative and safe bet...over time, so they all want in to the US markets. And to your point, the conference level is likely valued higher than the school level, unless the school is a major brand, like FSU, where you may be able to open up new markets to them. Same sort of situation is likely what would drive that investment in the B12 too, whether those markets are east coast or Mexico or even monetizing other partnerships they aren't using yet. The nice thing about the conference level is they don't really need to get involved in the day to day at schools nor, as you point out, look at the profitability of sport. All they need to do is bring in more revenue, that's their job, invest and grow. Their investing tide rises all boats, including theirs, so they get their return out of the conference revenues and the schools see an increase even with the PE payout, since it is over time, like an extra cut. I had read one estimation that with around $200m of investment the B12's broadcast revenues alone were projected to double in 2031. So if they put in $200m, looking for a 5% return per year, that's only $10m/y and if they were the ones facilitating that doubling of the contract, which would be for about $1.3b/y, they could likely take their $200m back out of the first year and keep collecting $10m a year for the duration as a rounding error the conference would never even notice long term. Long story short, the PEs that invest in sport are far different than the PEs that raid, they know what they're doing and they come with a lot more resources than just money. However, with each aspect they help, they also shave some money off for themselves so its a win/win for both. Unless you want to detether.

This is the part II right here. CBS is paying $1.1B currently for March Madness and, yes, the Autobids get their moment, but, while those upset games generate a lot of fun and a metric fuck-ton of gambling and website ad revenue, they don't year over year generate the $1.1b. The Final Four alone is watched like the CFP, it's probably 70% of the contract, the Sweet Sixteen is likely 90%. Let's pretend for a moment that the P4 or Autonomy Four, live up to that second name and finally become their own NCAA. The year end tournament would now be split between the same 68 teams. To pay out the next six years for the CFP, they looked at the last six years and said "here's how many times they were in, so we pay that forward, get in more, get paid more next time." So, I'd imagine the same system would hold true. By adding UCONN, the Big12 would have 4 of the last 6 champs, with only the ACC having Virginia and Covid getting another. And in that Virginia year, they beat Texas Tech. It is not out of the realm of financial possibilities to see where UConn could pay for itself IF, and kind of only if, the P4 take control of men's basketball too. Even if they gave the G5 access still, like they do in the CFP, the vast majority of the revenues are flowing to the P4 and, by the same math, with this move, the Big 12 would be very well leveraged in the discussion. The problem with all this is everyone wants the NCAA to exist because no one wants to operate all the other sports. So either they take the revenue and pay the NCAA to manage, or they keep the status quo. But if the money is the same as the football playoff, and it is set to grow too, I cannot imagine it is safe from plundering for long

I don't know if it does that, but what it does do is bring the same bargaining chip to March Madness when that inevitably is pulled out of the NCAA. If you apply the same payment structure to March Madness as they did to the CFP, which is like a 6-year participation payout. The more you have in, the more you get of the payment. This actually isn't nothing. March Madness currently funds the entire NCAA. ESPN is paying $1.3B per year for the 12 team playoff. CBS pays $1.1B for March Madness. Its foreshadowing step two.

They got a couple articles in there, but I only had one read left:

Seems like they're just constantly buying, lots leaving too

Are they moving UConn to Brooklyn?

ha yeah, agreed. I was more zinging to the wsj saying they were a development league. Which, they are. But the narrative is the flow is only one way, which is not the case. There is a fuck ton of talent that everyone raves about one year and forgets about the next once its portaling.

But, where are they going going, I mean really going? SEC Transfer Portal Movement Tracker SEC Transfers Total Transfers Out: 313 Total Transfer In: 180 Total Transfers Undecided: 88 Total Withdrawn: 10 Texas A&M Aggies Total Transfers Out: 24 Total Transfer In: 21 Total Transfers Undecided: 6 Total Withdrawn: 1