MU Fan in Dayton, Ohio, writes: Ubben, I've heard a lot of talk about the new TV deal and all the cash it's gonna bring in. Call me stupid, but what does this mean for the average Tiger fan stuck in Podunk, OH? I've been forced to go to a sports bar to watch nearly every MU game last couple of years. Does this new deal put more MU games on my TV and my butt on my own couch more Saturdays? My bar tabs are adding up....
David Ubben: In theory, yes. If you're in Ohio and you don't get Fox Sports Network, it won't put a ton more games on your TV, but FX is on most basic cable packages and is in 98 million households nationwide. That's only a million or so fewer than ESPN and ESPN2. If you get ESPN, which, I'd like to think almost everyone has if they have cable TV, you should already have FX. Fox Sports Net, which has local networks that broadcast specific, region-based programming, may require you to purchase an upgraded sports package on most cable networks. If you live in the Big 12 region, you likely get Fox Sports Southwest, where a good portion of Big 12 games are broadcast.
DJ in Lisbon, Portugal, writes: Concerning the new TV deal and how it pertains to the School Networks(Sooner and Longhorn). If I read correctly FSN has the rights to each schools home game unless picked up by ESPN. So that takes care of all conference games. OU and UT only have 1 OOC away game. OU has FSU and UT has UCLA. Both of those match-ups are intriguing and are most likely to be picked up by ESPN. That is all of this upcoming seasons games accounted for. So where does that leave the School Networks? It seems like they will have no live football games, the driving force for the networks creation, to show.
DU: Well, no. There's still three nonconference games, and right now, the point is that schools still hold those third-tier rights for games not picked up by FSN or ESPN and can monetize them any way they see fit, whether it be streaming it online, getting a local broadcast or setting up a pay-per-view broadcast. Texas, clearly, would broadcast theirs on the Longhorn Network. Oklahoma's network, if it becomes a reality, won't be up by this football season.
And I would disagree that live football games are the driving force for networks. When you only have one a year, you don't launch a 24-hour network on the basis of one lame nonconference game a year. The driving force is a fan hunger for more from each school, but they'll feed that with a combination of some basketball games, almost all the baseball games, and other Olympic sports, as well as coaches shows and game replays, whether they be recent or historic. You'd be surprised at how many Texas fans would sit down and watch the 2005 Rose Bowl on repeat.
Think of it like "A Clockwork Orange," except the opposite.
Vusani in Swaziland asks: David, could you give us a simplified explanation of 1st, 2nd and 3rd tier rights and how that translates into funding with the new FOX TV contract? I have no idea what that means except that A&M is cranky again.
DU: Tier I rights are basically the huge football games, ones with big national appeal. That's your Red River Rivalry, Bedlam last year, the Lone Star Showdown in other years, basically the elite football games that the casual college football fan would care about. This is, as I understand it, a selection of 18 games. ESPN and ABC have these and they can select them in the week or two leading up to the game, so they get the most attractive matchups.
Tier II is the next set of games. Good games, but games likely only relevant to Big 12 audiences, so mostly conference games like, say, Kansas-Baylor last year or Oklahoma State-Kansas State. Now, there are 40 of these games.
Tier III includes the games that are only relevant to a certain fan base. That's your Northern Iowa-Iowa State matchups, for instance. I'm oversimplifying this to just football, but Tier III also includes Olympic sports like baseball or softball or women's basketball that people might want to watch, but untelevised games previously went unused. The Big 12 is now trying to position itself as a league that allows schools to profit off these events by monetizing them in a Big 12 Network or a school broadcast somehow.
The Big Ten, meanwhile, doesn't allow schools to monetize their third-tier rights and the Pac-12 likely will not allow schools to do that, either. That's a big reason why Texas, which has a market for its own network and stands the most to gain off these third-tier rights, didn't want to go to the Pac-16.
.
Facebook
Twitter