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Could the Big 10, Pac-12, and ACC form an alliance creating the four million club?

Spartan4ever

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May 29, 2001
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Interesting article from the Athletic about these three conferences forming an alliance that allows them to preserve their autonomy, but profit financially with this kind of alliance.

Staples: Why would the Big Ten form an alliance with the ACC and Pac-12? It’s all about TV’s ‘Four Million Club’​

COLUMBUS, OH - NOVEMBER 26:   Tyler Durbin #92 of the Ohio State Buckeyes kicks an extra point during overtime of the game against the Michigan Wolverines at Ohio Stadium on November 26, 2016 in Columbus, Ohio.  (Photo by Jamie Sabau/Getty Images)


By Andy Staples 3h ago
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The ACC, the Big Ten and the Pac-12 are planning something. The Athletic broke that news on Friday, but since even the principals of the deal haven’t quite agreed on exactly what they’re going to do together, it’s difficult to project how impactful an alliance could be. If it’s purely a voting bloc to administratively demonstrate how mad everyone is at SEC commissioner Greg Sankey for taking Oklahoma and Texas from the Big 12 while on a working group to expand the College Football Playoff, then it likely won’t accomplish much because the three leagues’ needs don’t always align.
But if the plan includes a scheduling alliance to create more games in the Four Million Club for each league, then it could be a valuable partnership for all of them. It also could benefit the viewers by giving us more interesting games to watch.
What’s the Four Million Club? It’s the group of football games that draw more than four million viewers.
These are the games networks are willing to pay premium prices for, and they’re also the type of games the SEC’s addition of Oklahoma and Texas will add to that league’s inventory. In conversations with television executives and consultants, conference officials and athletic directors, it has become clear that the hunt for premium television product will drive this round of realignment (or, in the case of the alliance, rearranging). So I asked a trusted source who has been involved with many television contracts what audience qualified as meter-moving in this ever-splintering environment, and that source drew the cutline at four million.
Examining which games cracked the Four Million Club explains a lot about the Oklahoma/Texas move, and it also offers a potential explanation why those three leagues would want to work together. It also helps explain why the schools Oklahoma and Texas left behind are seemingly being left in the cold.
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.
* All of this data is publicly available at the indispensable Sports Media Watch, where Jon Lewis combs through industry publications and compiles ratings on a weekly basis for a variety of sports.
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)
The conference difference is stark. But before we show you how it’s about to get even more dramatic, let’s examine how individual teams fared. These 13 schools made at least 10 appearances in Four Million Club games from 2015-19.
Most games in the Four Million Club
That list is heavy on the SEC and Big Ten and light on everyone else. So why would the Big Ten want to help the ACC and the Pac-12 when the Big Ten’s ability to generate those audiences gives it a competitive advantage?
Because the SEC is about to generate a lot more of those games. And by creating a few more with the help of some friends, the Big Ten could stay relatively even and continue to distribute as much or more to each school as the SEC will once Oklahoma and Texas join and a new ESPN deal replaces the below-market deal CBS enjoys for the best SEC game each week.
By adding Oklahoma and Texas and doing nothing else, the SEC would create more Four Million Club games. Three of the five editions of the Red River Rivalry between 2015-19 cracked the club, and conference games between Oklahoma and Texas and Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, LSU and Texas A&M would be likely candidates to make the club**.
This also could help Texas, which has not been the kind of draw it was during the Mack Brown era. Texas was only involved in eight Four Million Club games from 2015-19. That’s fewer than Oklahoma and five current SEC members (including rival Texas A&M) during the same span. Texas could use the boost, which is probably a big reason why the Longhorns sought new conference membership.
But in addition to adding the new members, the SEC also is likely to add a ninth conference game when Oklahoma and Texas join. That will create more frequent matchups between Auburn and Florida, Alabama and Florida, Georgia and LSU and Georgia and Texas A&M. Those matchups also are strong contenders to draw four million or more viewers.
**As Stewart Mandel has pointed out, one natural byproduct of conference-only schedules in 2020 is that viewers and season-ticket buyers don’t want to go back to the days of fluffy nonconference schedules. After they got a season of all-killer, no filler — however weird it might have been because of the pandemic — they want more of that.
Former Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany knew that creating an environment that put his league’s premium brands together more frequently would create more games that would allow his league to charge networks more for. In late 2012, the Big Ten and Pac-12 canceled a previously agreed-upon scheduling alliance after several Pac-12 schools had issues scheduling games. Instead, the Big Ten opted to move the league to a nine-conference game schedule starting in 2017. Not coincidentally, this is when the Big Ten’s most recent contracts with Fox and ESPN kicked in.
The biggest stroke of genius from Delany was making those deals last only six years. They end after next football season, meaning the Big Ten gets another bite at the apple before the ACC, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC. With suddenly SEC-less CBS and a curious NBC also sniffing around, the Big Ten’s rights could fetch a huge premium, especially if the league can guarantee even more Four Million Club games.
Rather than increase the number of conference games again (which could lead to some staleness), the Big Ten could work to ensure interesting games get scheduled with an alliance. If that alliance is with the ACC and Pac-12, it’s not difficult to imagine home-and-home series such as Clemson-Michigan, USC-Wisconsin, Oregon-Penn State, UCLA-Ohio State and Virginia Tech-Nebraska. These could replace one bodybag game a year, helping to juice season-ticket sales and create more valuable television inventory.
Such matchups provide more Four Million Club members for the Big Ten when they’re played at Big Ten sites and more for the ACC and Pac-12 — which need them even more — when played on those schools’ campuses. Week 2 of this season should be an excellent test for this theory. Washington visits Michigan and Oregon visits Ohio State in what were supposed to be home-and-home return games, but the meetings in the Pacific Northwest were wiped out by the pandemic. Those games should do excellent numbers.
The Pac-12 needs these matchups the most, because it struggles to generate that kind of buzz on its own. Despite having deals with Fox and ESPN/ABC, the kind of blowtorches that allow for these audience sizes, there were almost as many Four Million Club games involving Notre Dame playing Pac-12 schools (four) as there were league games that drew that kind of interest.
But all of those Notre Dame games (two against USC and two against Stanford) drew larger audiences than the five conference games that made the club. The biggest audience for a Pac-12 conference game from 2015-19 was 4,301,000 on Fox for USC’s win at Washington on Nov. 12, 2016. That was the only loss Playoff-bound Washington suffered during the regular season, so it generated buzz. But that game didn’t even win its own time slot that night. That honor went to Iowa’s 14-13 upset of Michigan, which drew 6,442,000 viewers on ABC.
Most watched games (2015-19)
REGULAR-SEASON MATCHUPNETWORKVIEWERS
2016 Michigan-Ohio StateABC16.841M
2019 LSU-AlabamaCBS16.64M
2017 Alabama-AuburnCBS13.657M
2018 Michigan-Ohio StateFox13.345M
2017 Alabama-Florida StateABC12.557M
2019 Ohio State-MichiganFox12.42M
2018 Alabama-LSUCBS11.543M
2019 Alabama-AuburnCBS11.43M
2015 LSU-AlabamaCBS11.063M
2015 Michigan State-Ohio StateABC11.052M
2016 Notre Dame-TexasABC10.945M
2015 Ohio State-MichiganABC10.830M
2015 Ohio State-Virginia TechESPN10.585M
2017 Ohio State-MichiganFox10.507M
2016 Alabama-LSUCBS10.385M
The ACC could use the boost as well. The league’s deal with Notre Dame — five Notre Dame vs. ACC football games a season plus full Fighting Irish-ACC membership for other sports — certainly paid dividends. That deal created an average of one Four Million Club game a year on an ACC campus thanks to a contractually mandated visit from Notre Dame. Still, the gap between the ACC and the Big Ten and SEC remains huge, and the ACC’s contract with ESPN runs through 2036. Anything that could create better inventory and potentially allow for a boost to that deal would be welcome.
The league we haven’t yet discussed is the Big 12, which could wind up on the outside looking in if the other three decide to align together. Taking away Oklahoma and Texas reduces the number of Four Million Club games involving only remaining Big 12 members to two (2015 Baylor-Oklahoma State and 2015 Baylor-TCU). A collection of teams that can’t generate premium audiences will not fetch a premium television rights deal. Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby has met with Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff to discuss potential options, but as you’ve read above, the Pac-12 needs plenty of help itself and might not be in a position to help a league in even more dire straits.
The SEC has made its move, and now everyone else is trying to formulate a response. The best kind? The one that lands as much of each league’s TV inventory in the Four Million Club as possible.
 
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