Realignment Megathread (All The Moves)

isucy86

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Apr 13, 2006
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Why do you keep talking about attendance like it matters in realignment? It doesn’t. Wins and losses barely matter. It’s money, which comes from TV viewers. That’s it. A school can have 100,000 people at the stadium and if no one is turning the game on TV, they’ll be in the MAC.
But do you really think the fans not showing up in person are watching on TV? Doubt it.

IMO attendance is a good indicator of overall fans interest and value to the networks. I can't think of many high media value FB schools that average less than 60k fans to their games.

The Big10's recent adds are the exception and they are located in the 2nd largest DMA.
 
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CascadeClone

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I get the point but it really doesn't correlate at all. Last year ND who everyone is bending over backwards to try to add barely got over 100K viewers for their week 2 match against Toledo that was a 3 point game. Doesn't matter that they had great attendance for the game what matters is ratings and since the game was placed on peacock against a MAC team no one watched it. Same thing happened the same week for bama, almost as many fans in attendance as viewers.

Attendance is about how great an in game experience there is which for several big ten schools is awful. But even when Michigan is giving away tickets if you buy a pepsi their ratings are still amazing. That is what matters.
That's such an outlier being on Peacock, I don't think its relevant to your point.

What it is relevant to is everyone who thinks streaming is going to magically pay tons more than traditional. Maybe eventually, but not today.

Side point, when looking at viewership numbers, and trying to get a handle for each school interest/viewers, you have to control for other key independent variables. e.g. opponent, timeslot, channel.

Oregon St for example, had worst viewership in the P12 (IIRC), but they also got stuck on P12N more than anyone else. Becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's not a hard linear regression to do, and I am sure the networks do it (well, pretty sure). Maybe I will try to find that data and regress it for fun sometime, but I do have a gf so maybe not lol.
 

2speedy1

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No, all sports were affected during the Covid year. What did we have? 1000 basketball tickets. Big ten had no fans I thought.
I guess I have to figure out when the year breaks down. I might be wrong. But I still think 189k sounds low. Ours may be closer right at 2.6M but theirs doesnt.
 

2speedy1

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I like this, but not sure how accurate it is? No way Baylor fills 98.1% of their stadium.
Its totally by ticket sales, and Baylor has a much smaller stadium remember. All of these schools report attendance by ticket sales not actual butts in the seats.
 

clonedude

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Apr 16, 2006
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Its totally by ticket sales, and Baylor has a much smaller stadium remember. All of these schools report attendance by ticket sales not actual butts in the seats.

That's true. A lot of people must buy tickets and not attend games there I guess. They are most known for their tarps.
 

drmwevr08

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Nov 25, 2006
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I am going to repeat this on every single person that repeats this same thing.

Tell me how Oregon keeps their AAU status when they have 1/5 the research budget as ISU, and has neither a medical nor an engineer school.

No one wants to weigh in on that fact. Oregons research in miniscule and ranked in the 150s we were in the 70s and climbing at last rating, and have nearly doubled our research funding since.

Oregon has neither major factor for AAU, but somehow they can maintain their membership but we can not.
I think if you go to the AAU office you'll see they all wear the freshest Nikes around.
 

JUKEBOX

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That's such an outlier being on Peacock, I don't think its relevant to your point.

What it is relevant to is everyone who thinks streaming is going to magically pay tons more than traditional. Maybe eventually, but not today.

Side point, when looking at viewership numbers, and trying to get a handle for each school interest/viewers, you have to control for other key independent variables. e.g. opponent, timeslot, channel.

Oregon St for example, had worst viewership in the P12 (IIRC), but they also got stuck on P12N more than anyone else. Becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's not a hard linear regression to do, and I am sure the networks do it (well, pretty sure). Maybe I will try to find that data and regress it for fun sometime, but I do have a gf so maybe not lol.
Our Cheez-it bowl with Clemson had television viewership numbers that outdrew the Pac-12 title game.

I agree though, it's hard to compare since opponent, timeslot, channel, etc. has a significant impact.
 
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2speedy1

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You can’t count those cardboard cutouts they had as paying ticket sales.
My problem is the math.
If it was 11,500 tix per game for 4 games. If those tix averaged $60. That would make up the entire 2.7M that site shows as our entire AD ticket revenue for the entire year...All sports.
You would not be able to sell 1000 tickets per bball game, none for womens, none for wbball, none for vball, none for anything. Not saying there was a lot, but the numbers dont compute right. At least not to me.

And for Iowa's figure. That would be less than 4K fans at $50 per for 1 game. Could be right I guess It is Iowa. LOL.
 

alarson

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That's true. A lot of people must buy tickets and not attend games there I guess. They are most known for their tarps.

Also, like most attendance things , numbers like this can be gamed.

Remember when our official capacity was 45k but we often had attendance of over 50k (because we didn't count the hillsides)? Baylor does something similar

Baylor has an official capacity of 45k but has had a bunch of games with attendance above that. Their actual capacity, judging by their record attendance, is more like 50k.
 
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2speedy1

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Also, like most attendance things , numbers like this can be gamed.

Remember when our official capacity was 45k but we often had attendance of over 50k (because we didn't count the hillsides)? Baylor does something similar

Baylor has an official capacity of 45k but has had a bunch of games with attendance above that. Their actual capacity, judging by their record attendance, is more like 50k.
At some point, not sure when, we changed how we report our attendance. If you look at anything that reports our sell outs it says in the fine print, that we do not report numbers above our capacity.

I remember we used to report numbers above capacity like some places do, but we no longer do, it may have been when we went to the 61,500 capacity. But either way when we hit the capacity whether we sell standing room tix or not we dont report that number, at least not publicly.
 

2speedy1

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That's true. A lot of people must buy tickets and not attend games there I guess. They are most known for their tarps.
Those tarps eliminate capacity though I believe. So if they have tarps over seating it is like those seats are not there. meaning the capacity is reduced officially so if they have a 40k stadium and tarp 5k seats their capacity is officially 35k. So selling 35k tix means they are at 100% capacity until they remove the tarps.
 

isucy86

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I get the point but it really doesn't correlate at all. Last year ND who everyone is bending over backwards to try to add barely got over 100K viewers for their week 2 match against Toledo that was a 3 point game. Doesn't matter that they had great attendance for the game what matters is ratings and since the game was placed on peacock against a MAC team no one watched it. Same thing happened the same week for bama, almost as many fans in attendance as viewers.

Attendance is about how great an in game experience there is which for several big ten schools is awful. But even when Michigan is giving away tickets if you buy a pepsi their ratings are still amazing. That is what matters.
You can find exceptions. But teams that don't draw well, aren't going to have high viewership.

USC & UCLA were taken because their media market and the ability of BTN to charge more.

Michigan, tOSU, Bama, OU have great viewership because 80k+ have attended their games for the last 50+ years!

Those prior season ticket holders watch on TV. Those fans that share season tickets, watch on TV.

It also doesn't hurt that teams with great viewership have a long history of bowl level teams. And fan memories are long- look no further than Nebraska FB fans and Indiana hoops fans
 

AlaCyclone

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Our Cheez-it bowl with Clemson had television viewership numbers that outdrew the Pac-12 title game.

I agree though, it's hard to compare since opponent, timeslot, channel, etc. has a significant impact.
Bowls aren't stupid. There is a reason that ISU has been chosen to play in their last four Bowl Games vs. Clemson, Oregon, Notre Dame and Wash. State. ISU brings fans to the city AND draws well on TV. Now, they just have to start winning more than 1 out of 4 for the next level of respect nationally.
 
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isucy86

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I think the main point is that I'm pretty sure we pull our weight in TV ratings, and evidently we're top-25 in attendance nationally. We have the 3rd biggest stadium in the Big 12 behind Texas and OU.

So it's odd then out of all the Big 12 teams, we get the comparison to Oregon State or Washington State. These are teams averaging 20-30k in home attendance.

There's definitely a disconnect between the reality and perception of Iowa State.
Not really. At this point media market size still matters. Especially for the BTN, SECN and ACCN and how they make money off cable & streaming subscriptions

Unfortunately, ISU isn't in a large media market and we don't have 10-20 years of being a top 25 team!
 

SEIOWA CLONE

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They will organize the NIL and the boosters can help with that. It's 50 million that the boosters can funnel into the NIL instead of facilities. If those conferences end up making 50 million more a year, the difference will start showing up on the field. It might take a few years but there will be 2 conferences and everyone else when it comes to football.
Sounds good on paper, but those donations to NIL are now not tax deductible, they may be in the future, but as of today, they are not. So is a person going to make this large donation, know he cannot take it off his taxes or just continue to give the money to the school and deduct it?

Does the school count the donation to the NIL fund the same as a donation to the school? More you donate the more perks you get, and unless schools are willing to count your donation to the NIL fund the same as to the athletic fund, many will continue to do what they have been doing.

If you are saying that schools can now take that extra $50 million and put it into NIL, that would make the athletes employees, and that will never happen. Money from NIL has to be totally separate from university funds, so EIU or any other school cannot take the extra money from TV and use it to fund their NIL program.