The Athletic just put this out an hour ago. Its behind a paywall, so here's the text. Its actually a pretty thorough piece:
If you’re wondering what makes the SEC so wonderful and why ESPN is willing to back up the Brink’s truck for that league’s rights, let me introduce you to a term called the “avid fan” that the networks use to measure the value of a particular league. The SEC has more of them than anyone. College football also has more avid fans than college hoops. That’s why football drives everything. But there are a few basketball programs that have enough avid fans that their schools offer something outside of just football. One of those schools is Kansas.
Getting the conferences or even ESPN to try to share basketball viewership data is like asking for CIA secrets — for some reason, they’re not sharing — but as one industry source, who assumed I’d get these numbers, said: “You’re going to find that Kansas and (Kentucky) are off the charts in viewers, and then there is everyone else.”
He added that those are two programs whose numbers are actually competitive with college football. This is relevant because when placing value on the two main revenue sports when it comes to television negotiations, the industry belief is that football accounts for 80 percent and men’s basketball the other 20. Kansas could be an outlier, a program whose basketball ratings are significant enough to at least move the scales.
“I do think this is basically all around football,” Kansas basketball coach Bill Self told The Athletic. “But I do think there’s some things that a school could bring to the table and not necessarily be focused on all football, and that would be, do you have a brand? What is your national brand? And would that be something that could benefit people? I think academic reputation is going to be very, very important that leagues can look at or mergers can look at and say, ‘How do all the schools mix,’ based on similar type of philosophy academically. So I think there’s a lot of things that go into it.
“But I do think having a brand in a sport … is something that could be beneficial.”
Self did not say what his preference is going forward. He’s very presidential and careful with his words right now, but he’s basically laid out here the case for what makes KU attractive as a league member. He will tell you these are decisions that need to be made at the administrative level, but Kansas would be smart to put him at the negotiating table as it prepares to either attempt to jump leagues or help a new-look Big 12 negotiate its next television contract.
“From a basketball coach’s perspective, I have thoroughly enjoyed the Big 12 and the competitiveness of the league,” Self said. “It’s provided the interest and ability to recruit guys to maybe as competitive a league as there has been in America. I have enjoyed that, but maybe there’s something out there better. Maybe there’s something out there that’ll be more of a challenge. I know that Kansas basketball will be fine over time, but we shouldn’t look at it as just Kansas basketball. We should look at it as the University of Kansas.”
KU’s blue blood status brings with it some cachet, and that matters to the networks. The Jayhawks have as much history and tradition as anyone in the sport, and they also have a history of networks wanting to televise their games. They have, for instance, played at least one game on CBS for 38 straight years. They’re a staple on ESPN’s Big Monday. They get these primetime spots because they have avid fans who care.
Kansas also has the academic piece for the Big Ten. KU and Iowa State are the only two of the remaining eight with an Association of American Universities affiliation. (Thirteen of the 14 Big Ten schools are in the AAU. Nebraska, which was an AAU school when it went into the league, has since lost its AAU status.) Iowa State also makes sense as a pairing with Kansas, because the Cyclones also score well in the avid fan category in both football and basketball.
But — and this is the major caveat here that anyone skeptical of the Big Ten’s interest in Kansas will bring up — the football portion of the equation obviously hurts. KU’s average viewership number in football this season was just under 560,000, which was dead last in the Big 12 by a wide margin, according to data at Sports Media Watch. The Jayhawks are 18-99 over the last 10 years and have won just five conference games over that time period.
“They would benefit more if they were more in the Mark Mangino era, there’s no question about that,” said one source with knowledge of negotiating television deals for conferences. Maybe the hiring of Lance Leipold will pull KU football out of the gutter and actually draw a television audience again, but that could be a few years down the road. Kansas needs to sell hope because that’s really all it has right now in football.
One other hurdle for any of the remaining eight is what’s the actual value add of each. Stewart Mandel wrote last week that two sports TV consultants estimated to The Athletic that about 50 percent of the value of the Big 12’s television contract derived solely from Texas and Oklahoma. The Big 12’s current deal paid each school around $25.2 million this last fiscal year, according to tax returns. Add in other league revenue — mainly from the bowls — and the schools received an average of $38.5 million. Last year, the Big Ten paid out about $42.4 million to each of its members. That number was down from about $53.8 million the previous year because of canceled football games. So, in theory, the Big Ten would have to be convinced that any school that comes into the league would be able to increase its TV revenue enough that no one’s bottom line suffers. And conference realignment is not about rivalries, tradition or even fun. It’s about money.
What’s scary for Kansas is the last time the realignment scavengers put the Big 12 on brink of collapse in 2011, the emergency landing spot for KU was expected to be the Mountain West.
Which brings us to another question: If KU ends up in a watered-down Big 12 or outside of the Power 5, can Kansas basketball continue to thrive? Does conference affiliation matter?
Gonzaga is thriving in the West Coast Conference and has proved you can build an attractive NCAA Tournament résumé with smart nonconference scheduling and beating the brains in of your conference teams. The Zags have been a No. 1 seed in three of the last four NCAA Tournaments — it would have been four of five had the pandemic not claimed the 2020 tourney — and since the NCAA introduced the NET before the 2018-19 season, the two schools with the highest average finish in that ranking system are Gonzaga and Houston, the latter of which plays outside the power conference structure in the AAC.
“I actually do think (league affiliation) matters,” Self said. “There’s Villanova that doesn’t play football, and of course, they’re in a great basketball league. But they’ve experienced great success not playing football, and Gonzaga has experienced unbelievable success not playing football in how they go about their business in their respective leagues. I don’t think it’s necessarily imperative. A basketball brand can exist and flourish, wherever you are, because obviously Gonzaga has proven that can happen.
“But the bottom line, when you play football, I don’t think that’s the percentage play. When you have to support all the programs — and football being obviously the major one — conference affiliation is very important.”
Will Bill Self and the Jayhawks stay in the remnants of the Big 12 or seek a new home? (Denny Medley / USA Today)
Self knows money matters. A new iteration of the Big 12 could see a new television deal that is substantially less than the current one. If OU and UT really make up 50 percent of the value, and the league stays at 10 members and gets a new contract worth half its current deal, then KU could be working with $13 million less per year. And that’s a conservative estimate only looking at TV. In the last fiscal year, KU’s revenue and expenses were almost identical at around $102 million. Slashing millions of dollars from that revenue could lead to cost-cutting measures across the department. That’s the fear that each of the remaining eight is dealing with right now.
Self says he does not know what’s ideal. The company line from the remaining eight is that they need to stay loyal and stick together. There’s incentive to at least do so until 2025, because if Oklahoma and Texas bolt early — as expected — then the league would receive $80 million from each school. If the remaining schools split that evenly, that’s $20 million that could help offset some of the expected losses once the current TV deal runs out in 2025.
The question is whether these schools will stay loyal to each other or shop around and build distrust amongst themselves. They’re all saying the right things, but they’re also making the case for what their schools can bring.
And KU’s pitch will be built around its avid basketball fans being a different enough breed to matter.
If you’re wondering what makes the SEC so wonderful and why ESPN is willing to back up the Brink’s truck for that league’s rights, let me introduce you to a term called the “avid fan” that the networks use to measure the value of a particular league. The SEC has more of them than anyone. College football also has more avid fans than college hoops. That’s why football drives everything. But there are a few basketball programs that have enough avid fans that their schools offer something outside of just football. One of those schools is Kansas.
Getting the conferences or even ESPN to try to share basketball viewership data is like asking for CIA secrets — for some reason, they’re not sharing — but as one industry source, who assumed I’d get these numbers, said: “You’re going to find that Kansas and (Kentucky) are off the charts in viewers, and then there is everyone else.”
He added that those are two programs whose numbers are actually competitive with college football. This is relevant because when placing value on the two main revenue sports when it comes to television negotiations, the industry belief is that football accounts for 80 percent and men’s basketball the other 20. Kansas could be an outlier, a program whose basketball ratings are significant enough to at least move the scales.
“I do think this is basically all around football,” Kansas basketball coach Bill Self told The Athletic. “But I do think there’s some things that a school could bring to the table and not necessarily be focused on all football, and that would be, do you have a brand? What is your national brand? And would that be something that could benefit people? I think academic reputation is going to be very, very important that leagues can look at or mergers can look at and say, ‘How do all the schools mix,’ based on similar type of philosophy academically. So I think there’s a lot of things that go into it.
“But I do think having a brand in a sport … is something that could be beneficial.”
Self did not say what his preference is going forward. He’s very presidential and careful with his words right now, but he’s basically laid out here the case for what makes KU attractive as a league member. He will tell you these are decisions that need to be made at the administrative level, but Kansas would be smart to put him at the negotiating table as it prepares to either attempt to jump leagues or help a new-look Big 12 negotiate its next television contract.
“From a basketball coach’s perspective, I have thoroughly enjoyed the Big 12 and the competitiveness of the league,” Self said. “It’s provided the interest and ability to recruit guys to maybe as competitive a league as there has been in America. I have enjoyed that, but maybe there’s something out there better. Maybe there’s something out there that’ll be more of a challenge. I know that Kansas basketball will be fine over time, but we shouldn’t look at it as just Kansas basketball. We should look at it as the University of Kansas.”
KU’s blue blood status brings with it some cachet, and that matters to the networks. The Jayhawks have as much history and tradition as anyone in the sport, and they also have a history of networks wanting to televise their games. They have, for instance, played at least one game on CBS for 38 straight years. They’re a staple on ESPN’s Big Monday. They get these primetime spots because they have avid fans who care.
Kansas also has the academic piece for the Big Ten. KU and Iowa State are the only two of the remaining eight with an Association of American Universities affiliation. (Thirteen of the 14 Big Ten schools are in the AAU. Nebraska, which was an AAU school when it went into the league, has since lost its AAU status.) Iowa State also makes sense as a pairing with Kansas, because the Cyclones also score well in the avid fan category in both football and basketball.
But — and this is the major caveat here that anyone skeptical of the Big Ten’s interest in Kansas will bring up — the football portion of the equation obviously hurts. KU’s average viewership number in football this season was just under 560,000, which was dead last in the Big 12 by a wide margin, according to data at Sports Media Watch. The Jayhawks are 18-99 over the last 10 years and have won just five conference games over that time period.
“They would benefit more if they were more in the Mark Mangino era, there’s no question about that,” said one source with knowledge of negotiating television deals for conferences. Maybe the hiring of Lance Leipold will pull KU football out of the gutter and actually draw a television audience again, but that could be a few years down the road. Kansas needs to sell hope because that’s really all it has right now in football.
One other hurdle for any of the remaining eight is what’s the actual value add of each. Stewart Mandel wrote last week that two sports TV consultants estimated to The Athletic that about 50 percent of the value of the Big 12’s television contract derived solely from Texas and Oklahoma. The Big 12’s current deal paid each school around $25.2 million this last fiscal year, according to tax returns. Add in other league revenue — mainly from the bowls — and the schools received an average of $38.5 million. Last year, the Big Ten paid out about $42.4 million to each of its members. That number was down from about $53.8 million the previous year because of canceled football games. So, in theory, the Big Ten would have to be convinced that any school that comes into the league would be able to increase its TV revenue enough that no one’s bottom line suffers. And conference realignment is not about rivalries, tradition or even fun. It’s about money.
What’s scary for Kansas is the last time the realignment scavengers put the Big 12 on brink of collapse in 2011, the emergency landing spot for KU was expected to be the Mountain West.
Which brings us to another question: If KU ends up in a watered-down Big 12 or outside of the Power 5, can Kansas basketball continue to thrive? Does conference affiliation matter?
Gonzaga is thriving in the West Coast Conference and has proved you can build an attractive NCAA Tournament résumé with smart nonconference scheduling and beating the brains in of your conference teams. The Zags have been a No. 1 seed in three of the last four NCAA Tournaments — it would have been four of five had the pandemic not claimed the 2020 tourney — and since the NCAA introduced the NET before the 2018-19 season, the two schools with the highest average finish in that ranking system are Gonzaga and Houston, the latter of which plays outside the power conference structure in the AAC.
“I actually do think (league affiliation) matters,” Self said. “There’s Villanova that doesn’t play football, and of course, they’re in a great basketball league. But they’ve experienced great success not playing football, and Gonzaga has experienced unbelievable success not playing football in how they go about their business in their respective leagues. I don’t think it’s necessarily imperative. A basketball brand can exist and flourish, wherever you are, because obviously Gonzaga has proven that can happen.
“But the bottom line, when you play football, I don’t think that’s the percentage play. When you have to support all the programs — and football being obviously the major one — conference affiliation is very important.”
Will Bill Self and the Jayhawks stay in the remnants of the Big 12 or seek a new home? (Denny Medley / USA Today)
Self knows money matters. A new iteration of the Big 12 could see a new television deal that is substantially less than the current one. If OU and UT really make up 50 percent of the value, and the league stays at 10 members and gets a new contract worth half its current deal, then KU could be working with $13 million less per year. And that’s a conservative estimate only looking at TV. In the last fiscal year, KU’s revenue and expenses were almost identical at around $102 million. Slashing millions of dollars from that revenue could lead to cost-cutting measures across the department. That’s the fear that each of the remaining eight is dealing with right now.
Self says he does not know what’s ideal. The company line from the remaining eight is that they need to stay loyal and stick together. There’s incentive to at least do so until 2025, because if Oklahoma and Texas bolt early — as expected — then the league would receive $80 million from each school. If the remaining schools split that evenly, that’s $20 million that could help offset some of the expected losses once the current TV deal runs out in 2025.
The question is whether these schools will stay loyal to each other or shop around and build distrust amongst themselves. They’re all saying the right things, but they’re also making the case for what their schools can bring.
And KU’s pitch will be built around its avid basketball fans being a different enough breed to matter.
