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TV viewing for SEC is not what you think

cubuffsdoug

Heisman Winner
Apr 8, 2002
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I posted this in another thread, but I think this deserves to stand by itself. I was shocked how current and future B1G teams consistently outperformed SEC teams in rating. Even ND crushed it. I found this on Eagleoutsider.com. Read the bottom part of the post:

Re: Maryland may actually be leaving the ACC

Postby Dick Rosenthal on Tue Sep 07, 2021 2:41 pm

DrJackRyan {l Wrote}:Iowa would not be in North....still in Big 10 right?


innocentbystander {l Wrote}:Okay so Texas and Oklahoma are out, BYU, Central Florida, Houston, and Cincinnati are in.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/spor...s-join-byu-houston-ucf-cincinnati/5721822001/

All 4 will join, why wouldn't they? So I'm thinking the conference will not do something ACC retarded and split the conference in some bullshit way. They will split geographically:

  • North
  • Cincinnati
  • Kansas
  • West Virginia
  • Iowa
  • K-State
  • Iowa State

  • South
  • BYU
  • Houston
  • Central Florida
  • Baylor
  • Texas Tech
  • Oklahoma State
Have the conference championship in Arrowhead Stadium or maybe in St Louis. That would be reasonable. Its going to suck for Central Florida no matter which division they are placed. But Miami has been dealing with the same crap for decades.

I don't think they are going to want to wait until 2025 when Oklahoma and Texas are out. Why wait? Just expand to 14 if only temporarily. Texas no longer has any clout or say, they are leaving. Since BYU is independent they could probably join immediately. The others have to break their contracts with whatever shitball conference they are currently in.

Forget the Big !2, it's irrelevant. The SEC, Texas, Oklahoma and the south in general need to figure out their looming TV issues. Just looking at the ratings for this weekend as a microcosm for what they are facing. Clemson-Georgia, an epic showdown draws 7.8 million viewers at its peak on Saturday Night. Pretty good, except that Notre Dame-FSU on a Sunday Night dwarfed it with 8.8 million viewers at its peak. There was also much crowing about Clemson-Georgia possibly being the second highest Saturday kickoff primetime game in ABC's history, although it now looks like that will not be the case, finishing behind Ohio State-LSU and millions and millions of viewers behind Notre Dame-Texas. It gets worse for southern football when you look at the highest rated Saturday night games over the last 15 years (that's how far back the data goes that is findable). Despite having a bevy of primetime games with national title implications, the top primetime performers for ABC have been Notre Dame-Michigan, Notre Dame-USC, Ohio State-Penn State and its even worse with respect to the 3:30 national slot where there are five iterations of Ohio State-Michigan, a Michigan-Michigan State showdown, and two Penn State-Michigan games before you get to the top-rated SEC game on CBS. And before we start stating that it is easier to draw ratings on ABC than on CBS, it should be noted that the Notre Dame has had six games in the 3:30 time slot that outdrew the SEC's best on CBS. And just for shits and giggles, in comparing primetime games, Notre Dame-Clemson on NBC last year is the second highest primetime college football draw of the last 15 years, narrowly clipped by the aforementioned ND-Texas game. The highest rated college football game of all time continues to be the 1993 version of ND-FSU, which drew 23 million viewers for a Saturday afternoon game (in an admittedly different media environment).

The point of all of this is that mediocre northern/midwestern football crushes the absolute apex of what southern football brings to TV sets/laptops/smart phones. Rather than wasting their time getting into a regional arms race they can't win, the SEC should use the cyclical advantage it has now to figure out a way to draw the much larger northern audiences. We are headed to a 64 team league one way or the other, might as well do it now while the south has a lot of leverage. If things flip, as they seem to do every twenty years or so, and USC, Notre Dame, Michigan join Ohio State as posing a threat to SEC dominance, the Bamas, Auburns, and LSUs of the world are going to get a far less robust deal.
 
I posted this in another thread, but I think this deserves to stand by itself. I was shocked how current and future B1G teams consistently outperformed SEC teams in rating. Even ND crushed it. I found this on Eagleoutsider.com. Read the bottom part of the post:
Nice find. I wonder if Warren goes for semikill now and locks up the Western seaboard from a viewership standpoint or if he waits to be reactive until the SEC moves again.
 
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Nice find. I wonder if Warren goes for semikill now and locks up the Western seaboard from a viewership standpoint or if he waits to be reactive until the SEC moves again.
I think you only get aggressive for Notre Dame.

If not, you wait for the SEC to grab Florida State and Clemson. Then Notre Dame is a lock.

Then you take Stanford, Oregon, and Colorado to get to 20.
 
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I think you only get aggressive for Notre Dame.

If not, you wait for the SEC to grab Florida State and Clemson. Then Notre Dame is a lock.

Then you take Stanford, Oregon, and Colorado to get to 20.
Assumes Colorado does not bolt for Big 12. Oregon (Portland) actually may not make financial sense over Washington (Seattle) or Cal (ensures entire Bay Area with Stanford). This may make less sense form a pure athletics standpoint, but from the monies makes a lot of sense in terms of carriage fees. Its why Maryland and Rutgers made a ton of sense for the Big Ten despite at the time not bringing much athletically to the table at the time of that deal. The dollar volume was too good to pass up.
 
Assumes Colorado does not bolt for Big 12. Oregon (Portland) actually may not make financial sense over Washington (Seattle) or Cal (ensures entire Bay Area with Stanford). This may make less sense form a pure athletics standpoint, but from the monies makes a lot of sense in terms of carriage fees. Its why Maryland and Rutgers made a ton of sense for the Big Ten despite at the time not bringing much athletically to the table at the time of that deal. The dollar volume was too good to pass up.
Leaving the Pac12 or Big 12 for any conference not named B1G or SEC would be dumb.

All other conferences are in a holding pattern right now.

ND will be the next domino, or it’ll be FSU/Clemson to SEC.
 
Leaving the Pac12 or Big 12 for any conference not named B1G or SEC would be dumb.

All other conferences are in a holding pattern right now.

ND will be the next domino, or it’ll be FSU/Clemson to SEC.
You have to remember people panic when sh*t hits the fan. Calm and collected thinking goes out the window when you feel you are cornered with no way out.
 
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I posted this in another thread, but I think this deserves to stand by itself. I was shocked how current and future B1G teams consistently outperformed SEC teams in rating. Even ND crushed it. I found this on Eagleoutsider.com. Read the bottom part of the post:
Interesting speculation that weaker B1G schools like RU would be booted in that thread. One poster suggesting that the B1G would gladly swap Rutgers for Cuse. I think we all know that's complete nonsense. But it still spurred me to look up the TV ratings. This link shows the average per game viewership per team. Very interesting:



Cliff's Notes: RU 488k, Cuse 219k, BC 156k. All three teams had similarly craptastic seasons.
 
Interesting speculation that weaker B1G schools like RU would be booted in that thread. One poster suggesting that the B1G would gladly swap Rutgers for Cuse. I think we all know that's complete nonsense. But it still spurred me to look up the TV ratings. This link shows the average per game viewership per team. Very interesting:



Cliff's Notes: RU 488k, Cuse 219k, BC 156k. All three teams had similarly craptastic seasons.

Do you have a link to the article/data?
 
I posted this in another thread, but I think this deserves to stand by itself. I was shocked how current and future B1G teams consistently outperformed SEC teams in rating. Even ND crushed it. I found this on Eagleoutsider.com. Read the bottom part of the post:
And people said in another thread I'm overrating TV markets. Ha!

The SEC added Oklahoma TV market #41 and Texas which is nice, but they already had part of the market with Texas A&M. This isn't about how many fans they have or how competitive they are. It's about how many people you can reach. SEC has boxed itself into small TV markets, the B1G's TV contract is simply going to be more valuable.
 
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And people said in another thread said I'm overrating TV markets. Ha!

The SEC added Oklahoma TV market #41 and Texas which is nice, but they already had part of the market with Texas A&M. This isn't about how many fans they have or how competitive they are. It's about how many people you can reach. SEC has boxed itself into small TV markets, the B1G's TV contract is simply going to be more valuable.
That's why I'm confused when people/experts keep saying the B1G's TV deal will be second to SEC.
 
Interesting speculation that weaker B1G schools like RU would be booted in that thread. One poster suggesting that the B1G would gladly swap Rutgers for Cuse. I think we all know that's complete nonsense. But it still spurred me to look up the TV ratings. This link shows the average per game viewership per team. Very interesting:



Cliff's Notes: RU 488k, Cuse 219k, BC 156k. All three teams had similarly craptastic seasons.
Shocked we are only #58. Give Schiano time to rebuild the brand and our streaming viewership rankings will improve.
 
Interesting speculation that weaker B1G schools like RU would be booted in that thread. One poster suggesting that the B1G would gladly swap Rutgers for Cuse. I think we all know that's complete nonsense. But it still spurred me to look up the TV ratings. This link shows the average per game viewership per team. Very interesting:



Cliff's Notes: RU 488k, Cuse 219k, BC 156k. All three teams had similarly craptastic seasons.
I don’t watch much Rutgers football anymore but I do watch Big Ten football instead of the SEC. I believe more alumnus watch the Big Ten over SEC because Rutgers is in the Big Ten. This isn’t reflected in the numbers. When Rutgers becomes more competitive, I’ll watch more.

All the SEC fans are attending the game and no one is at home to watch the game on TV.
 
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”Streaming numbers are included when available. Games that do not have available data are counted as zero.”

In other words, this data is basically useless.

I don’t watch much Rutgers football anymore but I do watch Big Ten football instead of the SEC. I believe more alumnus watch the Big Ten over SEC because Rutgers is in the Big Ten. This isn’t reflected in the numbers. When Rutgers becomes more competitive, I’ll watch more.

All the SEC fans are attending the game and no one is at home to watch the game on TV.
I definitely watch a lot more Big Ten in general because RU is in the league. Big spillover effect.
 
I'd say they're about the same. I've mentioned an article in the Athletic about the networks' coveted 4M+ games. (although I've seen 3M and 3.5M also as a demarcation line depending on the source)

The B10 will probably get more money because it could have 1 and possibly 2 tv contracts come up before the SECs expires in the 2030s. The SEC remaining bump will come when ESPN takes over the SEC GOTW and that's it. But hypothetically, if both were on the open market they both would receive very good deals. I don't know if one would be way out in front of the other.

Here's that breakdown for 4M+ plus games from that article last summer.
2015-2019 (2020 not included because of pandemic) Bowls, etc..not included either. Just regular season games.


From the article:

I didn’t include viewing data from the 2020 season because everything about 2020 was weird and I didn’t want to skew the data, so I charted every rated regular-season game involving at least one FBS team from 2015-19. I didn’t include conference championships or bowls, which fetch different prices. Those five seasons featured 1,593 rated telecasts* and dozens more on the ACC Network, Big Ten Network, Pac-12 Network and SEC Network, which weren’t measured for audience size.

Of those, 198 telecasts made it into the Four Million Club. The audience size ranges from massive (16,841,000 for the 2016 Michigan-Ohio State game) to just above the cutline (4,010,000 for the 2015 Louisville-Auburn game). And the conference distribution of the games is quite telling.

Setting aside the five split “reverse mirror” telecasts where two games were simultaneously sent to different portions of the country on ABC and the other game was available to each section on ESPN2, here is how the 193 single-game telecasts broke down…

  • 58 games between either independents or teams from different conferences (including all five Army-Navy games played during that period)
  • 55 SEC-only games
  • 49 Big Ten-only games
  • 13 ACC-only games
  • 12 Big 12-only games
  • Five Pac-12-only games
  • One American Athletic Conference-only game (2017 South Florida at UCF)

Also a break down from the article of program and their # of appearances in the 4M+ club in that 2015-2019 window.

Alabama 35, OSU 31, Michigan 26, Auburn and ND, 17, Florida and LSU 16, Clemson and UGA 15, OU 14, Tenn 13, PSU 12, MSU 11, Texas A&M 10

Also this tweet from Mandel of last years highest rated games which I posted last year. Seems about even to me.

 
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