Big East TV Deal

[charsibb]

It's been rebranded for a year and outside of the Olympics, its been a massive failure.

http://m.deadspin.com/5972528/nobody-is-watching-nbc-sports-network

Its a bad network. Bad deal. Stay on ESPN.

 

Your own link supports my previous post. And to say we're not a niche market is to have the goggles strapped too tightly.

 

"NBCSN just doesn't have anything people want to watch

yet. That will change, as the network always expected it would take a

few years to line up a full slate of programming. 2013 will be a big

year for NBC: Formula One begins airing in March, the English Premier League in

August, and the NHL could return to televisions as early as later this

month. This has been their plan all along: provide a home for the niche

sports that ESPN won't touch, but bring strongly devoted fanbases.

Whether that's a sound strategy remains to be seen, but it can't be

judged by looking at the ratings for Elk Fever"

[Carolina_Bull]

It's been rebranded for a year and outside of the Olympics, its been a massive failure.

http://m.deadspin.com/5972528/nobody-is-watching-nbc-sports-network

Its a bad network. Bad deal. Stay on ESPN.

Please read the third paragraph of your linked article. . . NBC sports is just getting started.

[Joe]

Great. It's just getting started. It's easy for a sports network to just startup.

Like CNN/SI. Oh wait.

Like Fox Sports Net national. Oh, yeah.

Like OLN's rebranding. No?

Okay, OLN's rebranding into Versus. ****.

Versus. Rebranded as NBC Sports Net is going to work, right?

ESPN is too dominant. No network will ever compete and while BE football fans might be a "niche", major college football isn't. We're paired on a network who boasts the Ivy League football as being their other college coverage.

In the end, it puts us on an island. Distancing ourselves further from the big boys when we didn't have to. We won't get much coverage on ESPN, the entity that controls the sport.

If the money was just so unreal we'd be stupid not to take it, I can see NBC Sports being the way to go.

For $2 million? On an obscure network? We're just asking for this conference to sink further into the ******** it has been driven into.

[BDYZR]

No, far from being negative...it's more of a balanced assessment.

 

Let's look at "averaging 50K". As of 2011 USF averaged - lifetime - around 35K. After the initial season, we dropped from 33K to 27K. Attendance averaged when we joined CUSA to around 28k . Then when we joined the Big East attendance averaged around 44K,  with a noticeable drop off after the 2009 season.

 

As we moved up in conference status (IAA, IA indy, CUSA, BE) attendance - which I translate to interest - moved up as well. As conferences draw the line between have and have not,  with US of F standing on the wrong side of the velvet rope, I don't see how  there's going to be an increase in attendance (interest), let along averaging 50K  (average...the midpoint...averaging) as we admittedly play in CUSA-II.

 

Then lets consider the TV contract. Face it, as much fun as it is to blame both the Big East and The Trilateral Commission for the lack of money flowing to the conference, I'm pretty sure that, like most things in life, there is a perceived value and that is exactly what you'll get paid. I've got Michigan and Ohio State on this channel and Uconn and Memphis as an option...what to do, what to do? Nobody is out to screw a conference, it's just that well...we're not exactly top shelf. If we were,

well, we wouldn't be expressing disdain over the paychecks.

 

No, far from being negative it's being realistic, which I know has limited shelf life on the board. My contention is that managed expectations for a team that has, at best, been average, would fall along the lines of winning some conference championships, which I'm pretty sure they don't just hand out. Remember, when you're on this side of the rope, your recruiting reflects that, so I don't know what the pitch is gonna be going forward, but that "we're a BCS school" needs to be scratched through.

 

We'll see, though. I appreciate the enthusiasm, but like someone said earlier...I'll just wait until the season starts before I fall in love. 

Any chance the economy had something to do with that?

IMO winning will bring the fans and the excitement back.

[charsibb]

Up 10 on Cuse at the under 4, UCONN's making a statement tonight to the C7, "Take us with you when you go."

[WoolyBully]

Any chance the economy had something to do with that? IMO winning will bring the fans and the excitement back.

 

The largest jump in average attendance was from 2006 to 2007 - nearly a +/- 22K jump and he largest drop in average attendance was from 2009 to 2010, somewhere in the +/- 12K region. It is my contention that winning, coupled with opponents of interest, are what bring people to RayJ. I can't attribute the economy to that, otherwise the 2008 to 2011 period should see a more severe drop. Our pitch, from day one, was that we were on an upward trajectory. It is also my contention that with the drop in competition there will be an associated drop in attendance/interest. I think there will be a core of around 30K that are there through thick and thin, but to 'AVERAGE  50K', we would really have to have a steady diet of big name programs visiting. However, winning - regardless of conference affiliation - would have a positive impact on turnstile usage. 

[Bull-by-Marriage]

It's been rebranded for a year and outside of the Olympics, its been a massive failure.

http://m.deadspin.com/5972528/nobody-is-watching-nbc-sports-network

Its a bad network. Bad deal. Stay on ESPN.

 

Your own link supports my previous post. And to say we're not a niche market is to have the goggles strapped too tightly.

 

"NBCSN just doesn't have anything people want to watch

yet. That will change, as the network always expected it would take a

few years to line up a full slate of programming. 2013 will be a big

year for NBC: Formula One begins airing in March, the English Premier League in

August, and the NHL could return to televisions as early as later this

month. This has been their plan all along: provide a home for the niche

sports that ESPN won't touch, but bring strongly devoted fanbases.

Whether that's a sound strategy remains to be seen, but it can't be

judged by looking at the ratings for Elk Fever"

 

 

I didn't know that they got the rights to F1 as well. People on here may not realize, but F1 has a pretty big following. Couple that with the BPL, NHL, and BE sports they will have a following. Plus there are a $hite ton of people that hate ESPN, not just USF fans.

[WoolyBully]

Yep, looking forward to F1, as I used to get my fix on SPEED.  So, you see, I'll be doing the heavy lifting to make sure this succeeds. Hey...F1 is right around the corner, so stock up on the Euro beer now! Grüße aus Heppenheim...Vettelheim! 

[slick1ru2]

NBC got Formula 1 because Fox is turning Speed into Fox Sports 1 in the summer, a national channel to compete with ESPN. Sucks because I watch the GT racing they have on Speed2.com. I have no idea how I am going to watch WEC or Open GT, etc.. I would have rather seen The Big East on Fox1 and the regionals because on NBC Sports, I think we are going to miss games.  But I imagine that they will be replaying games all week during the season to fill their schedule. The best thing about ESPN was you could watch all the USF games of the season on ESPN3 and with the proper setup, ie an XBox 360, its just as good, or better looking than cable/satellite.

[widerberg]

I didn't realize that NBC Sports now held the rights to broadcast F1 and BPL. That doesn't change my feelings that the deal, financially, just all kinds of sucks. But, it does excite me and provide some reassurance that the network won't fold after a couple of years. I think that, potentially, this network could be huge and the NBE, I guess, would be on the ground floor of that. If NBC Sports grows and flourishes, I would imagine we'd ride their coat tails. Image is everything, and if they really do market the violation out of us, and do it properly, then maybe the BE would get some cred back over the next 10 years or so. Feels like it could be a great deal.

 

BUT, I think the money is just atrocious. Just terrible on an epic scale. If the money were better, or at least there was a sliding scale based on stability or viewer/market growth, anything, then I'd be happy. But, locked into $20 mill for 6 years? That stinks and I think it's so bad that it cripples the conference. We'll be back to getting CUSA-level recruits, CUSA-level spending on facilities, etc., and it'll just be that much harder to try to eventually move up. USF doesn't have some rich benefactor or corporate bosom buddy to dump cash into the program. We're going to be operating on a shoe string with also-ran recruits. Not exactly setting us up for great future success.