[d4cohn]

It seems odd that so many awful bowls would still be good for business.  But I guess if you already have the stadium built, it doesn't hurt to turn the lights on for a night and hope enough people visit the local hotels and restaurants.

I agree but I think about free market principles. If these awful bowls didn't make money, they wouldn't exist. Somehow there are some really creative people who can turn a profit by putting on a game between two teams who probably have 3-6 records in their conference and played 3 OOC creampuffs.

Will be interesting to see how their financial/business models evolve with anticipated declines in TV rights revenues. They may not get the same amount of money from the networks in the future, which could in turn drive some consolidation.

Would be a really interesting business school case...

TV networks need Christmas and New Year's week content (when sports fans are generally off work for at least a sizable portion of time), and have been willing to pay premium dollar for it. Only way any of the non-major bowls make any money, if they do make money, is TV and TV alone. Watching the New Mexico Bowl right now, there are maybe 15,000 people there (for a 38,000 seat stadium). No way they are selling enough tickets, hotels and restaurant meals etc. for these type of games to turn a profit.

However, according to last year's stats, all but one bowl game (so 37 out of 38 games) drew at least 1 million viewers, and the last place game still drew 880K viewers. When the NFL is not playing on non-Sundays and Mondays, are regular season nondescript college basketball, NBA games etc. going to draw 1M+ viewers? No.

http://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2018/01/...-increase/

[d4cohn]

It seems odd that so many awful bowls would still be good for business.  But I guess if you already have the stadium built, it doesn't hurt to turn the lights on for a night and hope enough people visit the local hotels and restaurants.

I agree but I think about free market principles. If these awful bowls didn't make money, they wouldn't exist. Somehow there are some really creative people who can turn a profit by putting on a game between two teams who probably have 3-6 records in their conference and played 3 OOC creampuffs.

Will be interesting to see how their financial/business models evolve with anticipated declines in TV rights revenues. They may not get the same amount of money from the networks in the future, which could in turn drive some consolidation.

Would be a really interesting business school case...

TV networks need Christmas and New Year's week content (when sports fans are generally off work for at least a sizable portion of time), and have been willing to pay premium dollar for it. Only way any of the non-major bowls make any money, if they do make money, is TV and TV alone. Watching the New Mexico Bowl right now, there are maybe 15,000 people there (for a 38,000 seat stadium). No way they are selling enough tickets, hotels and restaurant meals etc. for these type of games to turn a profit.

However, according to last year's stats, all but one bowl game (so 37 out of 38 games) drew at least 1 million viewers, and the last place game still drew 880K viewers. When the NFL is not playing on non-Sundays and Mondays, are regular season nondescript college basketball, NBA games etc. going to draw 1M+ viewers? No.

http://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2018/01/...-increase/