G5 MINUTE: ESPN CONTINUES TO DOMINATE COLLEGE FOOTBALL MARKET

Original G5Blog Content

ESPN STILL THE GOLD STANDARD IN COLLEGE FOOTBALL

As chatter begins to pick up concerning the next television contract Conference USA will need to sign over the  next year , it might be helpful to take a quick look at just how dominate ESPN continues to be in the world of College Football. Like it or not the gold standard for College Football is ESPN by a wide margin. With this sports behemoth  playing such a dominate role in college football,  it would be wise for  Conference USA to give serious consideration to partnering with ESPN again. In fact, any G5 conference that does not have some form of partnership with ESPN does so at its own peril.

GAMES, MONEY AND SCHEDULE

We will begin this very brief  ESPN primer with a quiz. Care to guess how many College Football games ESPN broadcast last year during football season: .........okay if you guessed 450 your right. That's right, 450 games found a home on one of the multiple television channels ESPN owns and operates.

Not only did ESPN broadcast 450 games, they also made a fortune in the process of showing these games. Below,Mike Florio from Pro Football Talk, describes just how dominate a player ESPN is in College Football:

The powers-that-be in Bristol, who by virtue of their ownership by Disney ultimately answer to a board of directors and in turn to shareholders, need to stay the course that has made ESPN worth a whopping $40 billion.

Take away 17 regular-season NFL games, and subscription fees in excess of $5 per month per home will drop. Take away 450 college football games, and the monthly charge plummets.

ESPN has built its empire in large part on college football.  If college football goes away, or if at a minimum becomes diminished, that hurts ESPN a lot more than the NFL ever could.

Okay, if you got lost in Florio's numbers, watch the five minute NY Times video story below. The video examines how every year the most powerful college football coaches in the country come to Bristol, Connecticut and pay homage to  ESPN. The coaches make a pilgrimage to ESPN because they know that the obscenely large television contracts their conferences have sighed with ESPN are not enough , they also need exposure and the best time slots for their games.

Exposure and determining  game times is where ESPN's director of scheduling  Ilan Ben-Henan comes into play. In fact the NYTIMES calls Ben-Henan the most powerful man in college  football nobody knows. Watch the clip :

College Football's Most Dominant Player? It's ESPN


Any talk going forward of Fox or even NBC becoming a rival to ESPN is premature.  If as the video indicates, College Football's most important players still believe ESPN to be the mecca for College Sports, then the G5 will  have to continue to deal with ESPN, like or not. Conference USA will need to keep open the real possibility of an ESPN partnership. Doing so of course, continues to give ESPN what it wants most of all, the title of King of College Football. Stay tuned.

This is the first of a two part series looking at the challenges facing Conference USA and their new tv deal.