The north side will be a broiler. The south side will be a hot Blackstone griddle. I’m guessing the aftermarket prices on these tickets will be “Are you giving those away including your parking pass?”
The defending SEC champions open on streaming only. Wow, just wow.
At least, traffic won’t be bad.
It could be hotter than the opener v Georgia Southern in 2008. People were falling out from the heat. The concession stands ran out of ice on the north side, the lines were a mile long. But hey, let’s start the season earlier so we can add meaningless playoff games. I guess someone will have to die of heat stroke on the field (who cares if fans die?) before anyone thinks “gosh. Mid August is hot and humid. At least ESPN gets extra windows for ad sales!”
This is exactly my problem with the current scheduling model. No one and I mean no one wants this game with Tennessee State. We’re going to get these games in our season ticket packages while the Clemson game ends in with an outrageous price and travel to a neutral site.
I’m sure people won’t do it, but fan bases should say no to buying the neutral site games that were supposed to be on campus. Let those hotel rooms, the NFL stadium and restaurants stay empty on Labor Day weekend.
Not saying it is what we want but game attendance revenue will generate incremental growth for the program’s bottom line in this era where all the costs are rising at rates faster than any point in the sport’s history. (coaches, salaries, facilites etc).
In order to have exponential growth for revenue, administrators are going to need to find new income streams and/or convert existing streams into something more lucrative.
I think the Duke basketball/Amazon Prime opened everyone’s eyes. The era where Power conference teams announce home/home games 5 or 10 or 15 years down the future schedule were just marketing ploys to convince the casuals and the media that teams were serious about creating robust games. Most everyone knew that the majority of those games would be cancelled or adjusted.
I think we are close to the tipping point, like 1984, where a school is going to sue its own conference to be able to sign their own media rights deal for neutral site games against non-conference opponents. Based on the comments from the last month or so from our AD and President, its possible that, just like 1984, it will be UGA.
In 1984, there were no “contracts” that the schools were parties to, just NCAA “rules” that prohibited widespread broadcasting of games.
Today, there are legally binding and enforceable contracts which the conferences are a party to and which the schools are obligated by due to their membership in the conference, and the breach of such contracts by a school would likely result in a (substantial) claim for damages. In 1984, the only downside to Georgia and Oklahoma suing the NCAA and losing was that all the other schools would be pissed at them (but only temporarily until they realized the *literal* gold mine they were sitting on that had been opened).
Unfortunately, none of us can see the broadcasting contracts to see what they *really* say since the conferences and ESPN keep them in a secured vault buried three levels below Bristol, so it is hard to say precisely what the terms of those contracts are – almost everything about them is conjecture. That said, presumably Duke read the ACC membership agreement and the ACC’s contract with ESPN pretty carefully before agreeing to the Amazon deal. Are there “outs” like that in the SEC football contract with ESPN or the SEC membership agreement? I seriously doubt it….
Sort of … both the NCAA and the CFA were negotiating television contracts for its members. Both entities were limiting the number of games broadcast on weekend and how often teams could be televised in a season. UGA and Oklahoma sued on a basic level because the NCAA was going to go the extra step of banning schools that violated the one game per season rules from participating in other NCAA sanctioned sports and those championships. It violated anti-trust.
As far the SEC contract goes, ESPN owns the media rights for all sporting events (conference and non-conference) for home games at member institutions. Neutral site non-conference events are owned by the event (ESPN Events, Chick-Fil-A kickoff game, etc.) who negotiate with the media entities and pay the schools a cut. Probably under a Gentlemen’s agreement that if UGA plays Oregon at Mercedes Benz, they are negotiating with ESPN to put on “free” tv.
The SEC does not technically own any rights to neutral site, non-conference events. However, the schools are not allowed to stream media from their own websites and/or apps. This where I think the grey area is.
What I think is going to happen soon (and probably will result in a lawsuit) is a streaming service with tentacles in sports like Amazon Prime is going to create their own neutral site game for two big football brands and pay big money to the participants. Given the comments from our AD recently, I think Josh Brooks would be very open to Amazon offering $10m+ per year for a UGA neutral site series.
Fox/Big10 is already threatening legal stuff with the Duke/Michigan basketball game on Amazon. If and when it is attempted with football, expect similar court fights.
But what NFL/neutral venue is going to pick a fight with ESPN and sell tv rights to Amazon? Sure, one of those 32 stadiums *could* pick a fight with ESPN, but I think it is unlikely given their other business relationships with the WWL. What does that leave – Orlando, the Rose Bowl (again, both of which have some entanglement with ESPN as well), El Azteca (or elsewhere overseas, barf…)?
On the other hand, every decent-sized city in America has at least one arena that could be decently configured to host 10,000ish seats for a 2.5 hour college basketball game, and many/most of those have little or no “entanglements” with ESPN, so assuming your interpretation of the contracts is correct, finding an out to get onto a streamer is likely much easier, practically speaking, than CFB….
Could’ve been tailgating in Louisville.
But no, let’s bow to the Big Twenty.
Awful.
And now the SEC is apparently “banning” cupcakes the week before Thanksgiving, so we are going to the B10 model of scheduling them all upfront, and then running the gauntlet for 9-10 weeks – thanks Greg!
As much as I dislike paying for cupcakes, the fact of the matter is we are now asking these guys to play too many high-intensity games in too short a time period; if anyone GAS, they’d go to 11 games, cut out a cupcake, and give the guys another bye week, but of course will never happen!
Agree w all of it, need 4?
The only thing I can see that may be positive with the cupcakes and early start is it will definitely help us to acclimate to the hot weather before we get to the conference games. We will also be able to play some younger kids and some #2’s so we can get experience and add depth.
They were planning on acclimating for Columbia, but then Columbia got moved to November. What a world lol.
I’m just glad I’m not having to buy 3 cupcakes this season.
Is it me or do today’s football posts just make it feel like Thelma just pressed the accelerator to the floor as we near the cliff. I’m way more disgusted than excited about the coming season.
If the defending SEC Champs don’t want to be on streaming, then schedule a real football team to play. I hate watching these types of games more than the useless spring game that puts the crowd to sleep.
I know.
By the way, every school agrees to have 1 game per year be streaming only under the agreement with Disney/ESPN.
May God have mercy on the poor bastard/bastardress(?) wearing the Big Red suit for the WKU game…
Post of the day!