Duck Fan 76 No. 1 Share Posted February 25, 2023 So my feed is currently stuffed with a thousand sources that claim to have inside knowledge about what's going on with the PAC so I decided to get some publicly available information to see if I could getter a better gauge on what might even be real or not. The core of the discussion is of course $$Money$$ and most directly the money available from media rights deals. I've previously posted that this is actually only part of Oregon's athletic budget but in fairness it is a big one so I'm going to focus solely on those numbers. Specifically though, here is my data source: Which college football programs were the most-watched in 2022? | by Zach Miller | Run It Back With Zach | Medium MEDIUM.COM Another college football regular season is in the books, so we have another year’s worth of TV viewership data to dig into. The article lays out viewership numbers by school and only for the regular season which is the slice of the pie that the conferences are mostly negotiating with so it's a decent sample of relative media value. Ignore merchandising value, ticket sales and all other variables. This conversation is about conferences negotiating the rights to broadcast regular season football games. The method I used is simple and you can repeat it by dropping the list of schools into excel and adding in the conferences as tags. Primarily here what I'm looking at is the new 16 team Big-10 and 16 team SEC as the super conferences that drive this train. Summing up the viewership you can see the new SEC in 2024 would have had about 32% of all CFB viewers in the 2022 regular season. The new 2024 Big-10 would have had 29% of all viewers. That is an astounding market share for the two super conferences and explains the numbers they are getting. Every other school (so the 87 schools that aren't one of the lucky-32) sums up to the remaining 39% of CFB views. That's some potential bargaining power for sure but it's spread over all of the remaining conferences who are currently eyeing each other like the Donner party at a Christmas feast. First question, is there going to be a third super conference emerge? I summed up the 16 next most viewed schools which are: Notre Dame, Clemson, Oregon, TCU, Florida St., Oklahoma St., Baylor, Kansas St., Utah, Washington, BYU, Navy, Washington St., NC State, California and North Carolina. The Next-16 conference (tm) controls 22% of the viewership. That makes them little brother but it's respectable enough to not sit at the kids table for the aforementioned Donner party Christmas feast. Second question, How big would a conference need to be to give the SEC noogies? About 32 teams given that we are dealing with random variables here is a decent estimate. The ReallyBig-32 conference (tm) would also control about 32% of the viewership so they would be Poking ESPN and Fox in the eye on a fairly regular basis. That conference would range from Notre Dame to Colorado St. but have to divide itself up into regions, so sub-conferences. Third question, why hasn't a third super conference emerged yet? This one isn't directly tied to the numbers but it's closely related. Point one, the ACC is locked up like those guys in Awakenings (Google it). That prevents Clemson and Florida St. from moving anywhere. Their buyout before 2036 is in the $100Mil range so that's a pretty big hit. Point two, there isn't a lot of trust right now between conferences or schools (see Donner Christmas party comments). Point three, Notre Dame: Great News: Expanding CFP Keeps Notre Dame From Joining Big Ten And Other Conferences WWW.FORBES.COM With the bulk of the college football season starting this Labor Day weekend, Notre Dame has bad news, good news and better news. Let's jump to the better news: Notre Dame is pretty much... Truthfully a third super conference would likely need to consolidate the top of the remainder to make it viable. So, Notre Dame, Clemson, Oregon, TCU, Florida St. etc. It just doesn't seem viable to glue them all together and fly across the country. Fourth question, How much money is the PAC-12 even worth with SMU and SDSU? The 12 schools would account for about 8.6% which is a bit less than 1/3 of the Big-10. The Big-10 is getting paid about $1Billion per year so using that as a normalizing constant the PAC is worth about 1/3 of that so $333Mil per year which divides out as ~ $27Mil per school. Again, random variables so this is how I get to the we're fine at around $25Mil per school statement. Does SMU and SDSU bring much to the table? Not really, they would be behind Arizona St. in value though SMU is truthfully about the same value as ASU. As I've said before their potential value is splitting the Southern California and Dallas markets to get more than their individual fan bases. So, think of them as something for the PAC12 to grow into. Last question, what does the PAC do? I honestly don't know but I somehow think "Panic and throw spaghetti at the walls!" isn't the best plan. If the "solution" of pay schools based on actual value catches on then Oregon's share of media rights are worth about $68Mil per year. Arizona States would be about $9.8Mil per year. That differential would most likely LOCK Oregon at the top of the PAC (Yankee's style) and is a non-starter for ASU. The truth is Oregon needs the "Palooka of the week" to keep the product entertaining and keep us paying the bills. One way to think of that differential is that Oregon pays the PAC about $45 million per year to be our punching bag each week. That's about $4.5Mil per game which is higher than the $1Mil per game Portland St. payout but honestly the PAC games are way more entertaining so it seems fair. Now if we could just get those Arizona schools to realize they are our sparring partners and to stop knocking us out of the playoffs.... details, details. What do I think "SHOULD BE DONE"? Exit my analysis and enter stage left my completely subjective judgement of relative fairness. The Not-So-Lucky-87 conglomeration (tm) have a 39% controlling stake in CFB as a semi-pro football entertainment enterprise. Since the Big-10 and the SEC represent the have's in CFB I think CFB as a whole is best served by all of the remaining conferences making an informal (or possibly formal subject to legal review) collective bargaining agreement. They can essentially lock out the SEC and Big-10 from further raids on programs and force ALL of the remaining media to deal fairly with the remaining small time farmers, er, eh, football programs. The relative positions of Fox and ESPN are a significant threat for the remaining sports broadcasting endeavors and the landscape of the sport will get ugly fast if we end up carving CFB into two super broadcast networks let alone super conferences. Do I think that a conglomerate is likely? Not really but maybe, it could provide a legal footing for Clemson and FSU to exit the ACC chokehold but first the remaining schools need to get an agreement in place to prevent scabs from heading to the Big-10 or SEC. If only college athletics had a national association with enough power to prevent all of this from turning into naked cash grabs. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charles Fischer Administrator No. 2 Share Posted February 25, 2023 On 2/25/2023 at 1:53 PM, Duck Fan 76 said: The 12 schools would account for about 8.6% which is a bit less than 1/3 of the Big-10. Good gosh...stunning facts, and while I am grateful for them and the truth... Mr. FishDuck Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duck Fan 76 Author No. 3 Share Posted February 25, 2023 (edited) On 2/25/2023 at 2:09 PM, Charles Fischer said: Good gosh...stunning facts, and while I am grateful for them and the truth... To me the key is to remind myself that media rights are only one part of the Oregon football revenue pie. I see a lot of Oregon gear being worn all over the country and we don't have a mortgage on Autzen. 50k fans at $60 per seat for 5 games... $15Mil per year not accounting for my $75 can of beer or a better ticket sales estimate that is probably double my napkin math. Then you throw in CFB's most generous alum and Oregon is sitting in a pretty good spot. If Phil wants us in the Big-10 he will get us there I'm sure. If the Really-Big-32 happens I'm sure we would keep playing the 8 teams we've been playing since leather helmets. That includes the home and home with USC and UCLA. As I implied above, the NCAA does have some power here. A more restrictive rule that limits how many hours a collegiate athlete can travel in a semester could force some sanity back into the cash grab. Edited February 25, 2023 by Duck Fan 76 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pennsylvania Duck Moderator No. 4 Share Posted February 27, 2023 While searching for OBDF, I ran across this interesting tweet that shows our Ducks are getting watched on tv. See for yourself... You must click on the twitter.com link in the tweet to read the whole written message for the info to make sense. After that click on the chart to enlarge for easier viewing. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
