[NU Sports] So I guess Texas Tech ...

[Jonathan Hodges]

The "house of cards" of which you speak is built upon ESPN's per subscriber
fees they get from cable/satellite operators, which, from numbers I saw this
past year, are the highest of any national cable network (particularly when
one adds all of the ESPN networks together which are typically packaged in
some fashion to the operators).  [Note: the only ones higher are the
regional sports networks, I believe].

This money is how they were easily able to outbid FOX.  And the fact that
there are so many cable/satellite subscribers means that they keep raking in
the money, and when they get any bump in ratings (like for the national
championship game, which did indeed become the most watched cable broadcast
ever: 17.7M households & 27.3M viewers) that means that they can command
that much more from their advertisers.  In any case the key are the
subscriber fees and the ad money is icing on the cake.

(And this is not even considering extra revenues they get from ESPN.com,
ESPN the magazine, ESPN3.com, and ESPN radio all which benefit from having
the BCS).

If one looks at the viewership even the "worst" bowls give ESPN a ratings
bump, which is why they started and now own a good number of them.  And
people (record numbers) continue to tune in.  It doesn't matter how few
people show up - the reason that this many bowls exist now is cable TV (I
would imagine there is a strong correlation between cable TV subscribers and
the number of bowls when plotted against time).

In any case I don't see the bowl system or the BCS collapsing any time soon
barring federal intervention.  I think we'll see some kind of evolution, but
it will take time (20 years or so IMHO).

Jonathan


On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 4:54 PM, SjT (Stephen J. Truog)
<sjtruog at yahoo.com>wrote:

> > The game last night posted the
> > highest overnight metered market rating
> > (16.1) in cable TV history and will likely become the most
>
> True - but it was a big drop from the 18.2 of last year's game that was
> essentially over after the first drive when McCoy went out hurt.
>
> My point, I guess, is where is the money coming from in this house of
> cards? If ESPN paid more than Fox for it yet gets considerably lower ratings
> ... and if most stadiums are half empty and most games drop in ratings
> because of the glut of 6-6 MAC teams ... sooner or later someone is gonna be
> left holding the empty bag. And when the networks can't afford to overpay
> for lower ratings on the B(C)S, maybe some of these forgettable bowls will
> drop out. Hopefully.
>
> It just seems pointless to me - you overpay for less ratings and less gate,
> driving away fans by giving them bowl overload - pretty soon it's gonna
> collapse. A day of bowls or a week of bowls as sustainable - but this year
> was the longest and most bloated ever and it will only get worse as long as
> ESPN and the B(C)S keep feeding the monster.
>
> I mean honestly folks, how many bowl games did you watch? How many were
> interesting in that you can tell me something about them? How many of them
> were well played?
>
> Like I said, I only watched the Dallas Bowl and Rose Bowl in depth - our
> game wasn't well played, but was exciting. The Rose Bowl may have been the
> best played game of the season but had low ratings still. Meanwhile the only
> other two games I saw large chunks of - the Outback Bowl and B(C)S Bowl -
> were horrendously sloppy in turnovers, stupid penalties/plays and more. Not
> the usual college excitement we get during the regular season. And the
> crowds (usually half empty) at bowls seem to be in a trance. The
> excitement's gone. The four NFL games this weekend all had more "college
> like" crowds in a frenzy and were more exciting (aside from the Baltimore
> blowout).
>
> I'm just curious to see how long this charade will last. They can tout the
> "highest cable ratings ever" but put them side by side with past games and
> it's a big dropoff. Will they overpay next time? And if they don't, what
> will happen to the bowls feeding off the overspending? We'll see.
>
> GO CATS!!!
> -SjT
>
>
>
>
>


-- 
Jonathan W. Hodges
Contributor, HailToPurple
Web: http://www.hailtopurple.com/jhodges/
Twitter: @hailtopurple
Email: j-hodges at alumni.northwestern.edu