DRC: C-USA adds to television package with ESPN deal

Brett Vito · June 7, 2018

DRC:

https://www.dentonrc.com/sports/c-usa-adds-to-television-package-with-espn-deal/article_548f263a-de1c-50f0-8308-837d3d68b7f3.html

Harry · June 7, 2018

This is a positive development. Of course the more you win and the more eyes you have watching the more slots you will get. Great to hear they will be broadcasting so much of the postseason. Looks like ESPN is our main media partner at this particular time which is not necessarily a bad thing.

oldguystudent · June 7, 2018

Does it increase the number of weeknight football games?

Side Show Joe · June 7, 2018

This is not a "Television Package", it is a streaming deal. And the fact that no financial amount is even mentioned implies we sold it dirt cheap. This is what's wrong with our conference leadership.

Here is a direct quote from our commissioner...

“ESPN has continually positioned itself on the forefront of digital distribution and emerging platforms, which makes them an ideal fit for us," C-USA commissioner Judy MacLeod said in a statement."

I have no problem with having our games available on streaming services, but that should not be our commissioner's idea of an "ideal" media partnership. We need more games airing on actual television channels.

I cannot for the life of me figure out why MacLeod has not been fired yet. I wish Smatresk and Baker would pressure the other programs to find C-USA new leadership.

Cerebus · June 7, 2018

12 minutes ago, Side Show Joe said:

This is what's wrong with our conference leadership.

Unless we know they turned down a better deal (which isn't out there) then I don't see how you blame this on leadership. The market decided what our games our worth, we got paid that. If we want our games to be worth more we have to win more.

UNTFan23 · June 7, 2018

15 minutes ago, Cerebus said:

Unless we know they turned down a better deal (which isn't out there) then I don't see how you blame this on leadership. The market decided what our games our worth, we got paid that. If we want our games to be worth more we have to win more.

And at the same time, draw more eyeballs to whatever method is used to deliver the games.

Hunter Green · June 7, 2018

50 minutes ago, Cerebus said:

Unless we know they turned down a better deal (which isn't out there) then I don't see how you blame this on leadership. The market decided what our games our worth, we got paid that. If we want our games to be worth more we have to win more.

This

Side Show Joe · June 7, 2018

1 hour ago, Cerebus said:

Unless we know they turned down a better deal (which isn't out there) then I don't see how you blame this on leadership. The market decided what our games our worth, we got paid that. If we want our games to be worth more we have to win more.

I believe we would have been better off keeping our extra content on C-USATV, or return the media rights for those games back to the schools. No, it isn't my ideal preference, but I would prefer we did that. At least we would have control of the content, and possibly have beIN or CBS Sports pick up a surprise quality match-up or two during the season. I do not like our games being relegated to espn's streaming service. This season we have zero games on espn, espn2, espnu, or espnNews. They have no respect for our conference. The little money they will pay us for the games they are streaming isn't worth allowing them to cheapen our brand by only placing C-USA conference games on espn's pay-per-view website or espn3. If this deal would have included a set amount of conference games to be aired on the actual espn channels, then I'd probably be okay with it.

What we got today is crap, and no one will ever convince me otherwise. I'm not arguing that we didn't get market value. I'm arguing that if that is all the value the market will pay, we should just retain our content and stream it ourselves.

Furthermore, I hate espn, and will never pay to watch a game on espn+.

Edited June 7, 2018 by Side Show Joe

FirefightnRick · June 7, 2018

52 minutes ago, UNTFan23 said:

And at the same time, draw more eyeballs to whatever method is used to deliver the games.

More cannon fire?

Rick

Salsa_Verde · June 7, 2018

I don’t know if this is a generational thing but why are some against streaming? Cable is dead except for sports and even then I stream everything through my phone or tablet and pretty much everyone I know does the same. I obviously don’t know the specifics about the deal but it appears we are sacrificing revenue for exposure on an emerging new media platform? Although the schools are seeing an increase in revenue and lowering production costs? This seems like a great deal IMHO.

-GMG

Edited June 7, 2018 by Salsa_Verde

TreeFiddy · June 7, 2018

So, we basically dumped the rest of the stuff that we could not sell to CBS and other partners to ESPN, right?

ESPN basically took all the leftovers so they could have content for their streaming services. I assume this deal will pretty much end the need for CUSA.TV except for maybe regular season games in the oly sports?

Arkstfan · June 8, 2018

6 hours ago, Salsa_Verde said:

I don’t know if this is a generational thing but why are some against streaming? Cable is dead except for sports and even then I stream everything through my phone or tablet and pretty much everyone I know does the same. I obviously don’t know the specifics about the deal but it appears we are sacrificing revenue for exposure on an emerging new media platform? Although the schools are seeing an increase in revenue and lowering production costs? This seems like a great deal IMHO.

-GMG

My 85 year old father uses Roku to stream games and he can't keep a laptop working for clicking on every damn we detected your computer is infected ad.

Edited June 8, 2018 by Arkstfan

outoftown · June 8, 2018

A number of things to mention here.

1a) it is a good idea to sell surplus games to ESPN, provided it is done it the right way, i.e. keep it on ESPN2, ESPNU or at least ESPN 3, and make sure this does not mean you have to move any games for them. I think they did get the latter part right, but not the first.

1b) ESPN+ is a money grab by ESPN. It is essentially a worse ESPN3, that was given part of ESPN3s inventory in order to charge folks twice. For the customer, there is no upside to having games on both platforms rather than only 1. People will eventually get tired of paying twice and that is bad for the conference, wherefore it should have limited the deal to ESPN3. But it is just another sign of the long time trend of ESPN mortgaging the future of college football.

2) The deal with ESPN is likely for pretty much no money, but with a likely ill-advised thought on exposure (its not like being on ESPN3 gives you much exposure). I do however not quite know whether and how much ESPN contributes to production costs. If there is any benefit in this, then that is where it stems from.

3) Notice how 11 UNT games are on proper platforms now? Guess which game is not. The Liberty games remain by far the worst deal of the Wren Baker era, with really zero upside for UNT. Its not unlikely that we will all be watching that game on a crappy stream that ll make C-USA tv look good. Well at least, if things should go unexpectedly wrong, we can ask whether UNT really lost, if nobody got to see it.

4) i love that UNT got more than its fair share of BeIN games. BeIN is treating C-USA and UNT with respect.

Edited June 8, 2018 by outoftown

Wag Tag · June 8, 2018

I am sure the production quality will be better across the board! Taking schools out of it without minimum criteria is important. Remember the UTEP game at El piso! Who,s on first?

Cerebus · June 8, 2018

2 hours ago, Wag Tag said:

Remember the UTEP game at El piso! Who,s on first?

Worst had to be Rice. I can't understand how a school with a 5 BILLION dollar endowment would let their name be associated with that hot mess.

TreeFiddy · June 8, 2018

I think ESPN decided that the only thing that is going to go on ESPN3 is a simulcast of what people have already paid for (ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, etc.). Everything else is going on ESPN+, so no more freeloading on ESPN3. The issue with ESPN3/ESPN+ is that the schools have to pay for the production costs, unlike what we are getting with most of our CBS, BEIN, Stadium broadcasts where the broadcaster picks up the cost of production.

Ben Gooding · June 9, 2018

ESPN trying to squeeze the "little guy" yet again. Can't wait for them to finally roll over.

GreenN'walinsVet · June 9, 2018

It appears to me that we farmed out the games not being broadcast on traditional TV or the start up streaming services (facebook, twitter, etc...) to ESPN+. So to watch those game previously i was going to have to pay for CUSATV. Now im paying for ESPN+ for the same thing.

If i was a big olympic sports watcher, then maybe this upsets me, but as a big college football watcher, i would rather pay ESPN and receive access to numbers of games across multiple conferences.

Arkstfan · June 11, 2018

On ‎6‎/‎8‎/‎2018 at 6:45 AM, outoftown said:

1b) ESPN+ is a money grab by ESPN. It is essentially a worse ESPN3, that was given part of ESPN3s inventory in order to charge folks twice. For the customer, there is no upside to having games on both platforms rather than only 1. People will eventually get tired of paying twice and that is bad for the conference, wherefore it should have limited the deal to ESPN3. But it is just

Showing games on ESPN and ESPN2 is a money grab by ESPN also, we are just used to it. I'm old enough to remember when we people were ANGRY that you had to have cable to watch a game, especially a bowl game.

You are wrong that it is a worse ESPN3. I spent way too many hours watching ESPN3 and I've been watching ESPN+ since the Roku version rolled out. The switch to BAMTech has made a big improvement in streaming.

MLS Live last year vs ESPN+? No question ESPN+ has been an improvement and there has been no change in production, it's the same feed from the RSN that it was last year.

Now I'm not sure how exactly the CUSA deal is going to work, but the Sun Belt deal means we get more hoops (men and women), more volleyball, more women's soccer and more baseball (which I know isn't relevant here). For $50 a year I'm getting what was $80 a year from A-State and I'm getting rid of the $70 whatever I was spending on MLS. Save a $100 a year and get more stuff with a better stream? Take that deal every day.

My understanding is that CUSA TV will survive and my fan side perspective is that's not great because it signals that there is still content the schools are unwilling to produce up to broadcast TV quality. I know what it looked like when ULM did non-broadcast quality stream in football or Troy did it in basketball and I felt they should have paid me since most local cable systems do a better job on high school sports.

If subscribers watch CUSA content on ESPN+ that is good for CUSA because it will impact what ESPN will pay for CUSA content.

Salsa_Verde · June 11, 2018

So as I understand it C-USA football will be featured on ESPN, ESPN3, ESPN+, CBS-SportsNetwork, BeIN, Staduim, and Facebook this upcoming season. Obviously the games are going to be on a lot of different platforms but I think the more exposure the better. Plus the quality of production is really important.

https://www.underdogdynasty.com/2018/6/7/17438896/conference-usa-releases-2018-television-schedule-cusa-football-new-deal-with-espn

Edited June 11, 2018 by Salsa_Verde

untjim1995 · June 12, 2018

For the umpteenth time, can' t the SBCUSA just see that their content isn't ever going to get traction from the ESPN's or CBS' of the world and just realign to a conference setup that is more regional?

Arkstfan · June 12, 2018

4 hours ago, untjim1995 said:

For the umpteenth time, can' t the SBCUSA just see that their content isn't ever going to get traction from the ESPN's or CBS' of the world and just realign to a conference setup that is more regional?

No.

Now it is probably true CUSA doesn't look like what it would have looked like had ECU, Tulane, and Tulsa left with the rest and that made things awkward but there is no magic wand to realign.

There is no way you make La.Tech happy to be with ULM. There probably is no way to align UAB/USA/Troy into the same mix that the rest of the people in the conference are going yes we want our football team going to Alabama three times in two years or hoops playing three games there every year (well A-State would probably take it)

Look at CUSA. When Bankowsky wanted to add ULL and A-State to push UAB to the east to cut their costs and give them more regional games, it was ODU and MTSU who were bellyaching that they didn't want to go 16 unless someone like James Madison was added. Getting UAB in their division wasn't a big enough reward for them.

The Border and Skyline leagues didn't realign into something more sensible, schools bailed to start the WAC. When the WAC didn't make sense, schools bailed. When the Metro schools had trouble working together, they split and formed the Great Midwest. When the economics changed, they didn't just merge, they booted people.

Sun Belt and CUSA aren't going to sit down and make a happy family.

The only choices that are REALISTIC.

1. The two agree to form an LLC to sell their media rights jointly.

2. The two create a schedule alliance and instead of CUSA playing 8 league games in football, plays 6 or 7 and replaces a crossover game with some scheduling alliance game and does something similar in hoops.

3. People get really wild and agree to consolidate the two league offices to save costs and improve bidding leverage for bowls and tournaments.

4. A group of schools that aren't happy talk to another group that isn't happy and they defect to start their own conference.

But no. There is no way to divvy the two into two conferences that will get enough buy-in to work.

outoftown · June 13, 2018

On 6/11/2018 at 4:50 PM, Arkstfan said:

Showing games on ESPN and ESPN2 is a money grab by ESPN also, we are just used to it. I'm old enough to remember when we people were ANGRY that you had to have cable to watch a game, especially a bowl game

Now, you and some others made decentish arguments that ESPN+ isn't really worse than ESPN3, and I am willing to consider those and look into ESPN+ once the season comes around. However that is not my main grip with having games on ESPN+.

My main gripe is that games were artificially split between two rather similar platforms. I just cannot manage to see what the upside for the fans is on having games dispersed between BOTH channels, given that they reach similar audiences in my mind. It just adds cost. I mean I can see that it making C-USAtv obsolete may be a good thing, but I am not sure it will really do that. I feel keeping it all on ESPN3 or all on ESPN+ would have been very much preferable to mixing.

Edited June 13, 2018 by outoftown

meanrob · June 13, 2018

On 6/11/2018 at 2:50 PM, Arkstfan said:

Showing games on ESPN and ESPN2 is a money grab by ESPN also, we are just used to it. I'm old enough to remember when we people were ANGRY that you had to have cable to watch a game, especially a bowl game.

You are wrong that it is a worse ESPN3. I spent way too many hours watching ESPN3 and I've been watching ESPN+ since the Roku version rolled out. The switch to BAMTech has made a big improvement in streaming.

MLS Live last year vs ESPN+? No question ESPN+ has been an improvement and there has been no change in production, it's the same feed from the RSN that it was last year.

Now I'm not sure how exactly the CUSA deal is going to work, but the Sun Belt deal means we get more hoops (men and women), more volleyball, more women's soccer and more baseball (which I know isn't relevant here). For $50 a year I'm getting what was $80 a year from A-State and I'm getting rid of the $70 whatever I was spending on MLS. Save a $100 a year and get more stuff with a better stream? Take that deal every day.

My understanding is that CUSA TV will survive and my fan side perspective is that's not great because it signals that there is still content the schools are unwilling to produce up to broadcast TV quality. I know what it looked like when ULM did non-broadcast quality stream in football or Troy did it in basketball and I felt they should have paid me since most local cable systems do a better job on high school sports.

If subscribers watch CUSA content on ESPN+ that is good for CUSA because it will impact what ESPN will pay for CUSA content.

ESPN3 was dogshit last year. I would miss whole halves of games.

It's a small sample size but I watch MLS and other things on ESPN+ and so far no problems.

But I agree with another poster. Find one platform and put a majority of it on there. To me, BEIN and Facebook are a waste of time. But that's me.

Arkstfan · June 13, 2018

1 hour ago, outoftown said:

Now, you and some others made decentish arguments that ESPN+ isn't really worse than ESPN3, and I am willing to consider those and look into ESPN+ once the season comes around. However that is not my main grip with having games on ESPN+.

My main gripe is that games were artificially split between two rather similar platforms. I just cannot manage to see what the upside for the fans is on having games dispersed between BOTH channels, given that they reach similar audiences in my mind. It just adds cost. I mean I can see that it making C-USAtv obsolete may be a good thing, but I am not sure it will really do that. I feel keeping it all on ESPN3 or all on ESPN+ would have been very much preferable to mixing.

They bought a very expensive technology firm, BAMtech and need to monetize the acquisition.

They offer a game of the day from MLB and NHL and they are incorporating MLB.tv and NHL Game Center into ESPN+ as add-ons for an additional subscription.

There are rumors that if the Fox sale goes through that they will sweeten the ESPN+ pot by making your local Fox regional available on ESPN+. If that happens then an ESPN+ subscriber in Dallas will have a way to watch the Rangers, Stars, and Mavericks without cable.