Tyler Stearns |
The NBA Finals saw over a 50% decline in ratings from the finals before. The MLB has seen record-low viewership for the last playoffs (though it should be noted that the two teams in the World Series had and have relatively low followings). The NFL has always dominated ratings for American professional sports. But now, a new giant is coming to town, and it may overtake professional football.
College football has gone through some strange court cases in the past that have hindered its ability to create massive collective media deals. Of course, ESPN. has a large deal with the SEC until past the 2030s and worth well over one billion dollars per year, and Fox, CBS, and NBC have their deal with the B1G until later this decade, but there has yet to be a deal that collectivizes all leagues. This may be a reason why CFB cannot surpass the NFL. But it doesn't matter anymore, because the product is so improved that it outweighs the poor distribution of television rights around the country. Georgia versus Texas is expected to receive well over 133 million viewers and has the possibility of reaching 20. Those are Sunday Night Football ratings. Last week, the top five most-viewed games in the country all surpassed six million views. Now, it should be. noted that this past weekend was the biggest in CFB for the year, but it doesn't matter. People are watching college football. It may have to do with the fact that NIL and the Transfer Portal have evened the playing field, so there are more formidable teams. But what it has to do with is the declining attention span of the US. Football is an amazing product because it is scarce. It only occurs a maximum of fifteen weeks per year in college and around twenty-one in the NFL. But only one game is being played each week, so fans can look forward to watching the teams play. This is opposed to the MLB and the NBA, which are the opposite of scarce. They put their product out 82 and 162 times respectively per year. So there is a smaller likelihood that a fan will watch most if not any of those games. And the product itself isn't as exciting. 80% of the time in baseball, nothing happens. And whenever action is occurring in basketball, teams will call a timeout. That isn't to say that football doesn't have its fair share of ads - because it does. But again, teams only playing a maximum of twenty-one times per year is the reason why it is permitted by customers.
Now, going back to the idea of a universal media deal for all FBS teams in college football, divided amongst ESPN, CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox (and perhaps other channels as well). The deal could allow big-time games to be displayed nationally, and smaller games to be displayed locally. The deal would be easier to do with YouTube TV or any other streaming/live TV service. Cable would be unable to handle these capabilities because if a local game and a national game were on at the same time, then the national game would override the local game. But as cable starts to wane, this deal would effectively put it out of business. The deal would distribute money through a tier system. The tiers would be decided by which teams bring in the most money, which teams have the largest fanbase, and which teams are generally winning programs. Examples of tier-one teams would be Alabama, Georgia, Texas, USC, Michigan, LSU, Ohio State, etc. Tier two would be another threshold below the rest. This would be teams like Florida, Penn State, Wisconsin, etc. And there would be five tiers. The deal would be expensive, as it would have to cover the costs of every team in the country, but it would be less expensive considering the amount of companies involved. And the distribution of prime time slots would be chosen by a committee of members from each company.
This model would make viewing college sports much more organized, and generate a lot more revenue. This would open the door to create programs similar to NFL "Redzone", or even lead to the rise of college fantasy football, which would continue to increase the deal. The deal would only consider college football, not other sports. And it would not require further conference realignment, as the conference format allows bigger, more valuable matchups. The only change that would be best to make is reducing the CFP to eight teams. Again, scarcity is the key to ratings success, and creating a playoff with fewer teams would ensure this. The goal to win twelve games each year in the four-team playoff made watching the regular season so much more enjoyable. It isn't any less enjoyable with the twelve-team playoff, but it is somewhat diluted. Moving it back to eight teams would make this model work.
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