That is a LOW bar, but ACC fan bases take this, somehow as the ACC Network will be a huge success. Like in this article, they often define 'success' as coverage, but ignore the realities of revenue disparities and lack of ACC talking heads.
ESPN is dominated by pro SEC talking heads by a HUGE amount and I have seen no evidence this will change.
This article also ignores the recent explosion in coaches salaries that is a direct impact from SEC/B1G Network revenues of which the ACC is not enjoying.
I want to believe this network will work......work meaning a PRO ACC network, with ACC media, linear (ie on TV, not just digital), and revenue that is in the same universe as the SEC (say 70%). I think there is a 0% chance this all happens. I will gladly eat grow in the summer of 2020 (the earliest we will hear about revenue) if this proves wrong.
https://www.nunesmagician.com/2017/12/15/16780042/disney-espn-acquisition-of-fox-underlines-how-syracuse-was-right-to-move-to-acc-football-rights
If you live under a rock, I have no idea how you found this dive bar of a blog, but you probably heard that Disney is buying 21st Century Fox for $52.4 billion. Yes Dr. Evil, with a capital B. More pertinent to this site’s readership, part of the deal includes all 22 of Fox’s Regional Sports Networks, which is a huge double down on live sports content.
There’s a lot that can be made of this industry-altering move, but in our Syracuse Orange ecosystem, the biggest reason we should care is for the ACC Network and its current buildup. We’ve known since 2016 that Disney will be using Major League Baseball Advanced Media (spinning off a company called BAMTech) to power the back-end of the online content delivery. Known to date as ESPN+, the service should offer a supplement to cable subscribers, and now ESPN has 44 professional sports regional television deals on 22 more cable networks to pull and push content across other mediums.
Iger: "There will be a sharing of product so that we can infuse ESPN national with some more local content" and vice-a-versa. "The result will be that both will be better."— John Ourand (@Ourand_SBJ) December 14, 2017
In the short term, these networks will help boost ESPN’s viewership and Nielsen numbers (expect your local Fox Sports to rebranded soon). But in the long term, ESPN has plenty of options to satisfy the looming ACC Network commitment. Earlier this year, we were told that a linear ACC Network would launch by 2019, giving ESPN yet another collegiate network. These new deals solidify what that network could look like.
ESPN will have some form of ACC Network available for cable subscribers. Andrew Bucholtz of Awful Announcing speculates that ESPNEWS could be rebranded as such to guarantee that the new network has strong subscribers from the start. ESPN’s been making a hard push for their collegiate programming that many believe was topped off with a successful College Gameday in New York City, but I can’t imagine the SEC would be happy with being in the door first and the ACC being larger at the get-go.
Regardless, ESPN will now have a nationwide network to pump out ACC Network programming. There’s nothing stopping ESPN from offering an ACC Network Digital pass, all-inclusive or sport/school specific, available on streaming and mobile devices. Now couple that with an army of regional sports affiliates that can plop a Syracuse-Pitt game on in the major markets of the Midwest and West Coast, as well as the other self-produced content from the ACC Network and it’s affiliates. ESPN now has the power to guarantee the ACC and it’s member schools that they can be on TV in almost every major market in the U.S., and available digitally everywhere else in the world.
For Syracuse, this is nothing short of a win. When the Big East first started, the conference used the power of a startup ESPN to produce their own games to reach the country as one of the first conferences to realize the power of TV. Now almost 40 years later, ESPN and Syracuse are together again, but with the former flexing it’s muscles as the world wide sports content leader and the former as the producer of some of ESPN’s best talent on and off the screens. It’s the best thing ‘Cuse could ask for.
Disclosure: The author was employed by MLB Advanced Media when the Disney + BAMtech deal was announced.
This doesn't put a single penny extra in the pocket of the ACC. And the article literally makes no sense.
ReplyDeleteJust for starters, why would ESPN convert an already existing channel into the ACCN? They would make more money creating a new network/channel combo and getting the carriage fees of it. It also wouldn't fit the ACC/ESPN narrative that they've already secured deals to get the ACCN picked up by some cable providers.
Next, why would the Fox Sports regional networks make any difference? They already exist! They aren't new! They already have the opportunity to buy ESPN's leftover content and air it on their networks. That will not change with this setup!
But why would ESPN/the ACCN want to move that content off of it's ACCN properties anyways? The whole purpose of the ACCN is to make money, and the only way to do that is to put on quality content that people will watch and pay for and that advertisers will put ads on. If you start taking ACC conference matchups off of the ACCN or its digital platform and putting them on non-ACCN properties, you are literally and deliberately knee capping yourselves.
Even if there's a scenario where the ACC actually makes more money by moving content OFF of its own network, what is to prevent ESPN from doing the same with its Big Ten and SEC content? We already know both those conferences have better tv deals and better bowl deals. They receive more air time and praise from ESPN than the ACC. What's to prevent that from happening with ESPN owned Fox Sports regional networks, too? And so if these networks somehow do provide additional revenue to conferences, what's to prevent the Big Ten and SEC receiving more of that revenue than the ACC?
It honestly just sounds like that Cuse fan is happy because they think Cuse will be on tv more and in more tv markets. So it literally does FSU no good. None. Like you said Z, it's just more of the ACC's loser blood mentality. The same mentality that led Swofford to proudly proclaim they gave up potentially a larger tv deal in order to get more "access"...even though the ACC's access is LESS than conference's with better deals! SMFH, world. Yes, because a lack of "access" is where FSU is held back by the ACC, not revenue.
Par for the course for ACC fanboys to fail to ask any tough question or provide any useful information on how all these "big ideas" (ie, like all this "BAMtech talk that has lead to NOTHING) would actually work or make money.
(The only thing that helps the ACC is the launch of the ACCN. THAT would close the gap SOME on the Big Ten and SEC. But I find it very hard to believe it will match those conferences' networks in revenue, meaning there will continue to be a discernible gap. I do not buy, and have never bought into this whole "Keep revenue within 70-80% of the other conferences talk." It's crap. What good is that when the revenue being discussed keeps growing? That means the ACC deficit will keep growing. And I can't be the only one to have noticed that those who say to just keep it within "X%" have had a moving target on that number, and have been gradually lowering it over the years.
What are the Big Ten and SEC making now, $40M+/school? So probably ~$45M/school by the time the ACCN actually gets launched? What's 80% of that? $36M; an $9M deficit. That's the cost of a WELL-PAID head football AND basketball coach.
/tangent)
So no, I don't see how it will be impacted one way or the other. I don't see how this is much of a benefit. I don't see how this changes anything above or beyond what the ACCN itself was going to change.