(11-28-2018, 01:55 PM)Farm93 Wrote: The reality is that sports on the East Coast often end after midnight. And often start at 9PM local if the game is intended for a national audience or are played in "minor" conferences eager to get some of their teams on TV.
To get really clear of all of that content certain to generate higher ratings (SEC for football/ACC for hoops)
Pac-12 After Dark really means Pac-12 After more popular conferences end their day. And thanks to East Coast and Southern fans willingness to stay at stadiums and arenas well beyond midnight the truth is ESPN and Fox probably would prefer Pac-12 After Dark could provide 8PM or even 9PM kicks and tips.
The Pac-12 fans complain if games are too early or too late.
The Pac-12 fans complain if the sun is too bright or if the weather is not perfect. Worse the Cali fans don't even show up if there is rain in the forecast.
The Pac-12 fans grumble about trying to get through commute traffic for midweek games (rather than take the whole day off like the SEC types would do).
The true Pac-12 alums don't really have a ton of passion to watch their teams on the road.
And, worse, non-college educated citizens in the Pac-12 footprint generally don't care about college sports or the Pac-12.
The idea that the Pac-12 deal is even close to the SEC deal in financial terms is a miracle.
The Pac-12 fans that do watch are generally more affluent which is valuable to some advertisers, but for most products the passionate and numerous eyeballs watching the SEC is a better ad placement choice.
This, times 100. A ton of football games start at 8 p.m. EST and basketball games that start at 9 p.m. EST. I know folks out west forget this, but 76% of the country lives in the Eastern or Central time zones, which means that if you have any east coast/central teams playing at 8 p.m. EST/7 p.m. CST, why would ESPN carry a 5 p.m. PST game between west coast teams? There's no universe where Washington St v. Oregon attracts as many eyeballs as Miami vs. Florida State, even though this season the latter two teams were both markedly worse than the first two. My guess is 80% of the audience for PAC-12 games on ESPN lives in Mountain or Pacific time (which is 24% of the country).
I truly think when the cord-cutting dust settles in a decade, conferences will make money by extracting the greatest share of the revenue brought in for their sports, and owning the content and distribution platform will become key. The younger generation is used to everything on demand - why pay $100 month for Cable TV for the 10 hours of sports per month I want to watch on my tablet while multi-tasking? This is the future, and I do think the PAC-12 will be well positioned over time.
All that said, in the mean time, they really need to find a way to get it carried on more distributors. Until then, it's a liability, not a benefit.