Was reading up a bit on streaming. It was surprising how popular it already is and the trends are incredible. I turned a bit to look at sports and I thought this graphic was fascinating:
To make sure it's clear, the graphic represents professional sports. The demand we're seeing on soccer justified the investment we just saw to get those rights. Now, understanding that college sports aren't going to be nearly as popular as pro sports, that still leads me to believe that gaining rights to live broadcast a conference's football and basketball games (even soccer, baseball and hockey if they play those sports) is worth a ton to them. Also interesting and possibly important here is that surveys of consumers said they would deal with commercials if it reduced the cost of the app. Is it possible that for a streaming service a deal with a college conference for all those hours of live broadcast of content consumers are saying they want... that if they forecast that they could drive themselves to a larger streaming market share through content while making back what they invested through ad revenue... throw some of that back by lowering subscription fees or running promos (both of which snag even more subs & results in higher ad revenues in a cycle that has a pretty long runway before saturation)... wouldn't they be looking at the profitability best of both worlds (ad sales plus subscriptions)... and wouldn't that make a major conference's sports broadcast rights a hell of a lot more valuable and its investments much more easy to recoup through its revenue model?
I suspect, given that universities are generally risk averse, that the Pac-12 is going to leave money on the table which would be offered in a higher upside deal that carried the risk of making money below forecast if it didn't perform. With that, I see the Pac-12 wanting a safer, guaranteed minimum floor. To get that, they'd have to forego some upside. Even so, if the minimum was in that ACC/Big 12 zone and the upsides could carry it to where the B1G/SEC weren't in a completely different neighborhood, that would actually be a better deal that I would have expected if USC and UCLA had stayed.