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Post by drunkandstoopidbeav on Aug 9, 2023 12:29:19 GMT -8
It's extremely unlikely that a MWC with OSU and WSU is going to be able to land a TV contract even remotely close to those numbers. That's just the reality of the situation. Maybe if Stanford and Cal stay, then something could be worked out. But that's very unlikely, especially in Stanford's case. I think there's several options still on the table. That doesn't mean Barnes is spending most of his energy trying to make those work right now. Certainly he will move his focus if necessary. Seems to me that the 225 million a year is the baseline Apple is willing to pay for football programming right now to get into that sport. Apple fully expected a couple to few millions to sign up for the service - that's where they rake it in. Nothing really changes other than the teams. It would not be an MWC conference, it would be a modified PAC conference under my scenario, one that could still grow with stronger additions. I believe all of the major conferences are currently hooked into deals that likely won't allow Apple to get into for several years. This was/is kind of their opportunity. |
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Post by irimi on Aug 9, 2023 12:40:11 GMT -8
I still can't figure out Apple. Do they want to get involved in college sports or not. It seems as though apple shot low but there was room for negotiation. Lots of room. Then some schools turned scared and ran away. Still think apple could and would renegotiate with the pac4 plus others and end up where apple stated with the pac9. It was low? No, it was tiered. The $23 million was just the start. With 1.7 million subscribers, each school would have received $31.7 million, which is basically the same as the Big 12 deal. At 5 million subscribers, each school would get more than $50 million. That's not very low. |
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Post by drunkandstoopidbeav on Aug 9, 2023 12:47:56 GMT -8
I still can't figure out Apple. Do they want to get involved in college sports or not. It seems as though apple shot low but there was room for negotiation. Lots of room. Then some schools turned scared and ran away. Still think apple could and would renegotiate with the pac4 plus others and end up where apple stated with the pac9. It was low? No, it was tiered. The $23 million was just the start. With 1.7 million subscribers, each school would have received $31.7 million, which is basically the same as the Big 12 deal. At 5 million subscribers, each school would get more than $50 million. That's not very low. Kind of reading between the lines I'm betting there were more tiers in there. I think the 50 million rate was just an example. I read somewhere that a few of the ADs thought 1.7 would be easy to do and that 3-5 million were very achievable. You can bet that they worked in a percentage rate in there so if the conference ended up with 3 million they got paid more than for just 1.7 million subscriptions. I suspect it was all percentage based and as the subscription base increased so did the percentage rate (think taxes, higher earnings higher rates) |
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Post by grayman on Aug 9, 2023 12:49:09 GMT -8
It's extremely unlikely that a MWC with OSU and WSU is going to be able to land a TV contract even remotely close to those numbers. That's just the reality of the situation. Maybe if Stanford and Cal stay, then something could be worked out. But that's very unlikely, especially in Stanford's case. I think there's several options still on the table. That doesn't mean Barnes is spending most of his energy trying to make those work right now. Certainly he will move his focus if necessary. Seems to me that the 225 million a year is the baseline Apple is willing to pay for football programming right now to get into that sport. Apple fully expected a couple to few millions to sign up for the service - that's where they rake it in. Nothing really changes other than the teams. It would not be an MWC conference, it would be a modified PAC conference under my scenario, one that could still grow with stronger additions. I believe all of the major conferences are currently hooked into deals that likely won't allow Apple to get into for several years. This was/is kind of their opportunity. Again, if the MWC can pull off a merger with Stanford, Cal, OSU and WSU and probably add a couple more (SMU, etc.) as some sort of new Pac conference then they probably could land a deal. But I still doubt that it comes anywhere close to what was being offered to the Pac-12. It would most likely be better than the current MWC deal, though. |
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Post by grayman on Aug 9, 2023 12:57:22 GMT -8
Also Henry Skrimshander: "It would be best to stay in the Mountain and Pacific time zones, to save money on travel costs, to form future rivalries, for convenient starting times, so fans can more easily attend road games, so our athletes don't get overburdened with excessive travel, to avoid the logistical problems that will (IMHO) eventually take down the far-flung leagues that spread across four time zones." I'm not saying you want it to happen, but it sure seems like you're trying to convince people that it's a good thing. No, it's not a good thing, but it's the best remaining option. Big difference. I'm open to better, reasonable options that are actually possible. Sitting by the phone and twiddling your thumbs and clutching rosary beads waiting for the Big 12 to call isn't one of them. "No, it's not a good thing, but it's the best remaining option. Big difference." Fair enough. |
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Post by drunkandstoopidbeav on Aug 9, 2023 13:00:05 GMT -8
Seems to me that the 225 million a year is the baseline Apple is willing to pay for football programming right now to get into that sport. Apple fully expected a couple to few millions to sign up for the service - that's where they rake it in. Nothing really changes other than the teams. It would not be an MWC conference, it would be a modified PAC conference under my scenario, one that could still grow with stronger additions. I believe all of the major conferences are currently hooked into deals that likely won't allow Apple to get into for several years. This was/is kind of their opportunity. Again, if the MWC can pull off a merger with Stanford, Cal, OSU and WSU and probably add a couple more (SMU, etc.) as some sort of new Pac conference then they probably could land a deal. But I still doubt that it comes anywhere close to what was being offered to the Pac-12. It would most likely be better than the current MWC deal, though. On a per team basis my scenario is a much lower deal per school than the previous deal. On the basis of actual content, Apple would be getting a lot more content and paying significantly less per game than under the deal just nixed. It kinda washes out for Apple, the question is if 250 million a year was expected as a baseline only cost for getting into the college football business, if it is they'll probably consider getting 50% more content for that same price and just might jump at that. "Linear" TV and streaming are not the same, ad money and market eyeballs isn't the same deal as it is with TV. Apple has a 30 BILLION a year R&D budget (OK, 29.6 last financial year). They were apparently ready to throw 225 million a year away for 3 years on the Pac 9 if it didn't work out, the real difference here is the top end potentially may not be as high with a MWC heavy PAC. if they badly want to be in the college football game this is their opportunity, build something interactive and incredible and every conference will be jumping at the bit to join Apple the next go around.. |
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Post by Judge Smails on Aug 9, 2023 13:05:22 GMT -8
Again, if the MWC can pull off a merger with Stanford, Cal, OSU and WSU and probably add a couple more (SMU, etc.) as some sort of new Pac conference then they probably could land a deal. But I still doubt that it comes anywhere close to what was being offered to the Pac-12. It would most likely be better than the current MWC deal, though. On a per team basis my scenario is a much lower deal per school than the previous deal. On the basis of actual content, Apple would be getting a lot more content and paying significantly less per game than under the deal just nixed. It kinda washes out for Apple, the question is if 250 million a year was expected as a baseline only cost for getting into the college football business, if it is they'll probably consider getting 50% more content for that same price and just might jump at that. "Linear" TV and streaming are not the same, ad money and market eyeballs isn't the same deal as it is with TV. They were apparently ready to throw 225 million a year away for 3 years on the Pac 9 if it didn't work out, the real difference here is the top end potentially may not be as high with a MWC heavy PAC. if they badly want to be in the college football game this is their opportunity, build something interactive and incredible and every conference will be jumping at the bit to join Apple the next go around.. No, but you need subscribers and that pool would be much smaller. I think if Apple were to even offer, you'd be lucky to get $100 million per year as a starting point. |
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Post by drunkandstoopidbeav on Aug 9, 2023 13:18:32 GMT -8
On a per team basis my scenario is a much lower deal per school than the previous deal. On the basis of actual content, Apple would be getting a lot more content and paying significantly less per game than under the deal just nixed. It kinda washes out for Apple, the question is if 250 million a year was expected as a baseline only cost for getting into the college football business, if it is they'll probably consider getting 50% more content for that same price and just might jump at that. "Linear" TV and streaming are not the same, ad money and market eyeballs isn't the same deal as it is with TV. They were apparently ready to throw 225 million a year away for 3 years on the Pac 9 if it didn't work out, the real difference here is the top end potentially may not be as high with a MWC heavy PAC. if they badly want to be in the college football game this is their opportunity, build something interactive and incredible and every conference will be jumping at the bit to join Apple the next go around.. No, but you need subscribers and that pool would be much smaller. I think if Apple were to even offer, you'd be lucky to get $100 million per year as a starting point. Apple's R&D budget last year was just under 30 billion. I expect that 225 million baseline was considered to be basically in that category. Very few things make money day one, Apple knows that. Apple was apparently saying they expected to sell a lot more subscriptions than the ADs that thought 3-5 million was quite doable. They likely would be expecting significantly fewer under this iteration of the PAC, but still could probably justify the exact same expense (225 per year for the conference) if they believe they'll get far more than enough subscriptions than break even. The real question is, do they go forward with tighter margins and get the product out so in several years they can hit the big payday when contracts expire for the big conferences, or do they just quit on the idea of college football for several years and hope someone will play with them in the future. Supposedly Apple and the conference met this week after all of the crap went down, I bet things are still being looked at, time may tell. |
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Post by Henry Skrimshander on Aug 9, 2023 13:25:01 GMT -8
The sad truth is, Oregon and some other schools were undoubtedly looking at an exit strategy the second USC and UCLA announced they were leaving. They paid lip service to keeping the league together. The Arizona D all but said he started schmoozing Big 12 ADs in the past year. I do think ASU and Utah wanted to stay until it just became untenable.
And before you ask, "Well, why wasn't Barnes doing this?" it's a moot point. We were not attractive to the Big 12 (the Big Ten was never an option. NEVER). They were never going to ask us, we were never even in the conversation. Not then, not now, almost certainly not in the future. He'd have been wasting his time talking to a wall.
We simply don't move the needle. We don't have a sexy image, don't have a major metro area with lots of TV sets, don't have a long history of success, we don't have instant brand recognition. All that doesn't make us bad people, a bad program, or a bad school, because we're anything but that. We (and Wazzu) just don't move the needle.
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Post by irimi on Aug 9, 2023 13:26:21 GMT -8
It was low? No, it was tiered. The $23 million was just the start. With 1.7 million subscribers, each school would have received $31.7 million, which is basically the same as the Big 12 deal. At 5 million subscribers, each school would get more than $50 million. That's not very low. Kind of reading between the lines I'm betting there were more tiers in there. I think the 50 million rate was just an example. I read somewhere that a few of the ADs thought 1.7 would be easy to do and that 3-5 million were very achievable. You can bet that they worked in a percentage rate in there so if the conference ended up with 3 million they got paid more than for just 1.7 million subscriptions. I suspect it was all percentage based and as the subscription base increased so did the percentage rate (think taxes, higher earnings higher rates) The jump between 1.7 million viewers to 5 million is huge, too large to think that there wouldn’t be incentives for hitting 3.4 million (double the 1.7 level). Seems like a pretty fair plan. |
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Post by beaver94 on Aug 9, 2023 13:38:58 GMT -8
No, but you need subscribers and that pool would be much smaller. I think if Apple were to even offer, you'd be lucky to get $100 million per year as a starting point. Apple's R&D budget last year was just under 30 billion. I expect that 225 million baseline was considered to be basically in that category. Very few things make money day one, Apple knows that. Apple was apparently saying they expected to sell a lot more subscriptions than the ADs that thought 3-5 million was quite doable. They likely would be expecting significantly fewer under this iteration of the PAC, but still could probably justify the exact same expense (225 per year for the conference) if they believe they'll get far more than enough subscriptions than break even. The real question is, do they go forward with tighter margins and get the product out so in several years they can hit the big payday when contracts expire for the big conferences, or do they just quit on the idea of college football for several years and hope someone will play with them in the future. Supposedly Apple and the conference met this week after all of the crap went down, I bet things are still being looked at, time may tell. Apple may keep their overall budget for streaming college football the same, but I can’t see them not recognizing that the package they’d be getting doesn’t have the same draw as it did a week ago. Maybe they don’t go all the way down to 100 million but I can’t imagine they stay at 225 either. |
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Post by drunkandstoopidbeav on Aug 9, 2023 13:47:20 GMT -8
Apple's R&D budget last year was just under 30 billion. I expect that 225 million baseline was considered to be basically in that category. Very few things make money day one, Apple knows that. Apple was apparently saying they expected to sell a lot more subscriptions than the ADs that thought 3-5 million was quite doable. They likely would be expecting significantly fewer under this iteration of the PAC, but still could probably justify the exact same expense (225 per year for the conference) if they believe they'll get far more than enough subscriptions than break even. The real question is, do they go forward with tighter margins and get the product out so in several years they can hit the big payday when contracts expire for the big conferences, or do they just quit on the idea of college football for several years and hope someone will play with them in the future. Supposedly Apple and the conference met this week after all of the crap went down, I bet things are still being looked at, time may tell. Apple may keep their overall budget for streaming college football the same, but I can’t see them not recognizing that the package they’d be getting doesn’t have the same draw as it did a week ago. Maybe they don’t go all the way down to 100 million but I can’t imagine they stay at 225 either. I'm just hoping it'd be close enough that it works for OSU. To me it seems a lot of people think people only watch local football. I personally tend to watch a couple east coast games a year, don't know if that's common or not. Excitable OSU fans, if the team does well, will subscribe to Apple's service no matter where they live. I also think there's value in the PAC brand and if there is a "merger" it ought to be kept. My bet is that there's more football fans on the east coast who might say "I wonder what's going on with the Pac this season, I think I'll watch a game" than "I wonder what's going on with the MWC this season, I think I watch a game", even if they have to pay a few bucks for a month worth of football. |
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Post by Judge Smails on Aug 9, 2023 13:54:23 GMT -8
Apple may keep their overall budget for streaming college football the same, but I can’t see them not recognizing that the package they’d be getting doesn’t have the same draw as it did a week ago. Maybe they don’t go all the way down to 100 million but I can’t imagine they stay at 225 either. I'm just hoping it'd be close enough that it works for OSU. To me it seems a lot of people think people only watch local football. I personally tend to watch a couple east coast games a year, don't know if that's common or not. Excitable OSU fans, if the team does well, will subscribe to Apple's service no matter where they live. I also think there's value in the PAC brand and if there is a "merger" it ought to be kept. My bet is that there's more football fans on the east coast who might say "I wonder what's going on with the Pac this season, I think I'll watch a game" than "I wonder what's going on with the MWC this season, I think I watch a game", even if they have to pay a few bucks for a month worth of football. But, they won't be able to just "watch a game" without signing up for a separate streaming package. That is the risk with this. You're not going to capture a lot of casual fans with a subscription only service. |
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Post by rgeorge on Aug 9, 2023 13:56:47 GMT -8
Apple's R&D budget last year was just under 30 billion. I expect that 225 million baseline was considered to be basically in that category. Very few things make money day one, Apple knows that. Apple was apparently saying they expected to sell a lot more subscriptions than the ADs that thought 3-5 million was quite doable. They likely would be expecting significantly fewer under this iteration of the PAC, but still could probably justify the exact same expense (225 per year for the conference) if they believe they'll get far more than enough subscriptions than break even. The real question is, do they go forward with tighter margins and get the product out so in several years they can hit the big payday when contracts expire for the big conferences, or do they just quit on the idea of college football for several years and hope someone will play with them in the future. Supposedly Apple and the conference met this week after all of the crap went down, I bet things are still being looked at, time may tell. Apple may keep their overall budget for streaming college football the same, but I can’t see them not recognizing that the package they’d be getting doesn’t have the same draw as it did a week ago. Maybe they don’t go all the way down to 100 million but I can’t imagine they stay at 225 either. But, very quick math shows the combined 15/16 (assume Cal & Furd stick) have nearly the same # of eyes as the "9". Plus I'm betting those new areas have far fewer current subscribers. Hence, a large % of those populations would be new subscribers. |
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Post by grayman on Aug 9, 2023 14:00:40 GMT -8
The sad truth is, Oregon and some other schools were undoubtedly looking at an exit strategy the second USC and UCLA announced they were leaving. They paid lip service to keeping the league together. The Arizona D all but said he started schmoozing Big 12 ADs in the past year. I do think ASU and Utah wanted to stay until it just became untenable. And before you ask, "Well, why wasn't Barnes doing this?" it's a moot point. We were not attractive to the Big 12 (the Big Ten was never an option. NEVER). They were never going to ask us, we were never even in the conversation. Not then, not now, almost certainly not in the future. He'd have been wasting his time talking to a wall. We simply don't move the needle. We don't have a sexy image, don't have a major metro area with lots of TV sets, don't have a long history of success, we don't have instant brand recognition. All that doesn't make us bad people, a bad program, or a bad school, because we're anything but that. We (and Wazzu) just don't move the needle. I don't think most OSU fans disagree that the Beavers "don't move the needle" to one degree or another. I think they are questioning why people think there's such a huge gap between OSU and WSU and schools like Colorado and Arizona...not to mention Cincy and BYU, etc. Of course, you can go down the list and point out advantages for each school...but TV and general perception seem to be intertwined when it comes to OSU and WSU. If you try to wade through all the Twitter/X nonsense, it's quickly evident how many sports fans act like OSU and WSU are absolute trash in sports and bring absolutely nothing to the table. To me, that speaks louder than anything else. |
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