12-13-2017, 10:20 AM
USC fans are seriously overestimating their brand to think they could bring in a lot more money by being independent.
Over on BearInsider there's a thread https://bearinsider.com/forums/2/topics/77420 where the viewership stats were discussed. Cut-and-pasting here:
Total number of viewers (incl streaming) for conference championship games:
SEC: 13.5 million
Big Ten: 12.9 million
Big 12: 5.9 million
ACC: 5.4 million
PAC-12: 3.7 million (down from last year's UW-Colorado game which had 5.7M viewers and was also on Friday)
AAC: 3.4 million
It's not just playoff-relevant games where the conference has struggled to pull in viewers. The conference game with the highest tv ratings (USC-UCLA) didn't even crack the top 30 games. And the highest rated game involving a PAC-12 team (the school I wish I had gotten into/ND) was only around 20th. There's just a low avidity for college football fandom in the West. Even USC doesn't rank in the top 25 in terms of numbers of fans.
USC's highest-rated game this year which was against Texas pulled in about 5 million viewers. USC-UCLA got about 4 million, USC-ND about 3 million.
Going independent would allow them to schedule some opponents with larger fanbases/more eyeballs but filling out their schedule with WAC opponents would balance it out.
Really the best thing they can do to raise viewership and make more money is to continue winning.
Over on BearInsider there's a thread https://bearinsider.com/forums/2/topics/77420 where the viewership stats were discussed. Cut-and-pasting here:
Total number of viewers (incl streaming) for conference championship games:
SEC: 13.5 million
Big Ten: 12.9 million
Big 12: 5.9 million
ACC: 5.4 million
PAC-12: 3.7 million (down from last year's UW-Colorado game which had 5.7M viewers and was also on Friday)
AAC: 3.4 million
It's not just playoff-relevant games where the conference has struggled to pull in viewers. The conference game with the highest tv ratings (USC-UCLA) didn't even crack the top 30 games. And the highest rated game involving a PAC-12 team (the school I wish I had gotten into/ND) was only around 20th. There's just a low avidity for college football fandom in the West. Even USC doesn't rank in the top 25 in terms of numbers of fans.
USC's highest-rated game this year which was against Texas pulled in about 5 million viewers. USC-UCLA got about 4 million, USC-ND about 3 million.
Going independent would allow them to schedule some opponents with larger fanbases/more eyeballs but filling out their schedule with WAC opponents would balance it out.
Really the best thing they can do to raise viewership and make more money is to continue winning.