Duke apparently was given permission by ACC and ESPN to schedule three OOC mens basketball games to be broadcast by Amazon. Only reason I picked up on this is apparently Michigan signed up to be part of one of the games before securing Big10 and Fox approval. Curious if Duke gets a reduced share of conference payouts. Not sure what I think of this. We dont have the profile to secure something like this but smacks of Tobacco Road BS to permit this.
https://www.si.com/college/duke/blue-devils-potential-shakeup-brewing-ma...
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Been following this story for a few weeks now; it's really unclear if Duke has to share the money, or what.
My interpretation was that they are not sharing that money, but forgoing what would be the ACC share for those games.
Find it hard to understand how a Conference commissioner allows a team to just go out and make their own deal without some level of revenue sharing.
Philips quote in the article essentially defers the decision to ESPN and not the ACC. Jim is an empty suit.
On a more macro level, this is the obvious future of college sports---Broadcasting Paywalls.
The NBA already has half its Playoff games behind Amazon paywall, NFL is right on their heels.
Non-con games going behind pay services is going to become the norm soon.
Always been the problem with the NIL era....somebody has to pay for it--and Disney and Fox have no interest whatsoever in paying a 19 year-old $30k to make 12 catches on a season. The Fans will eat the bill, particularly once the mega-donors grow tired of throwing their money into a non-ROI entity like NIL Collective slush funds.
Pretty soon attempting to consume college sports is going to become like one of those old cartoons where you get turned upside down at the door so that your pockets empty out.
This was coming NIL or not. Like you said its in the pro leagues already, it was only a matter of time until colleges followed suit.
Because its Puke!
Why the F@#$! isn't the rest of the ACC colleges suing the ACC about the nonpropriety in this?
Because duke is probably giving up some rev share in exchange. We should learn more after the ACC meetings this week.
But wouldn't this move also reduce the overall pie of revenue that the conference members are sharing? Yeah definitely interested to hear the details, and it seems really strange that this would be allowed.
So let's say that Duke makes $4 million from this game... They can either
I'm sure as a private institution they will diligently and in no way manipulate the numbers so they can keep a disproportionately high percentage of the revenue.
Feeling a little snarky this morning...
They won't cook the books to lie to the ACC. First of all, Michigan is a public institution, and Amazon is a publicly traded company; it's not like this stuff can be kept secret. Secondly, a single $4m payday isn't going to be life changing for Duke Athletics. Finally, If they did try to screw over other schools in the conference in such a manipulative way, they would get punished by the ACC, and then fucked in the next round of realignment.
I'll believe that last one when it happens.
so you are telling me a tobacco road school did something that would probably not be allowed by any other school in the conference and that there will be no repercussions to that action whatsoever?
How long before FSU or Clemson tries this with a football game?
Yeah I have questions about what this means for the grant of rights.
Good opportunity for someone to throw Jim Phillip's pic into ChatGPT to remove the remainder of his teeth...
put on a pair of overalls and a red man chewing tobacco trucker's hat and you got something there.....
Don't like things needlessly going behind a paywall, but why schools don't figure out a way to monetize having a simulcast of games on linear cable with the school radio broadcasts as audio is beyond me.
Only time you ever see it is megacasts. You'd think the ACC would try and partner with ESPN for an extra tier that you could pick your school for x per game or y per year.
I'd absolutely love that option.
Ive always wondered things like this too. I think ESPN has been throwing around the mouse's money too long that they don't care about innovating, they just use it to keep inferior products. They keep giving me content I don't want, when they content I want is right there on the field. ESPN+ should have had every game streamed from anywhere. It should have had multiple options for every game, home town play by play, field noise, Spanish, etc. ESPN should have had an app that gives you highlights moments after they happen. Why wait for sportscenter. I dont go to their website anymore and i had a subscription for over a decade. Everything about them sucks now and I hate it, they should be better but don't need to be because they have FU money.
I listened to a pod about this recently. It was either Ross Delenger on Yahoo, Phantom Island with Ben Portnoy from the SBJ, or Matt Brown on SZD. Maybe all of them mentioned it. It all blends together.
Anyways - The top tier CFB/MBB matchups are valuable enough to be sold/packaged individually - High 7-figures for a single marque regular season game, 8-figures for individual post season games. You can make more money by packaging these separately and selling to the highest bidder.
In general, selling to a wider variety of broadcasters creates more scarcity (this is how the NFL has made so much money, and why the B1G contract is so lucrative). Once you sell some of your games at $X/game, there is now less inventory available, and the remaining buyers don't want to leave empty handed, so they pay more per game to ensure that they don't have zero games.
They do this for CFP games already. I don't think they are popular enough to do on linear cable; you can only get it on the ESPN app. It's similar to the ManningCast or the Pat McAfee broadcast.
His point is that it's done for CFP games already. Why not regular season games between random schools?
This is quintessential ACC. Notre Dame has a sweetheart deal. FSU/Clemson sued their way to a sweetheart deal (although it appears to might backfire on them). Now Duke has a sweetheart deal.
I hope Franklin sees this and convinces Babcock (or incoming AD) to find some sort of special deal for football. Maybe have an OOC game every year be at a neutral site, against another P4 and broadcast on Peacock, Apple, Amazon, whoever bids the best deal. Maybe the VT brand isn't big enough for that, but it would be a nice revenue source.