MAC & ESPN agree to new 13-year deal

[jpfalcon09]

The number of people on this board who decry streaming in favor of traditional television is amazing. I've thought I was in prehistoric times by the number of people who have dropped their form of cable altogether. ESPN3 and streaming is where the growth is, not traditional teevee.

All things being equal, I'd rather be with ESPN. It's a love-hate relationship, but people look at you differently if you're not with them. The Big East has every men's basketball home game on Fox Sports 1 and a lot of people last year viewed them as some kind of mid major. It was being compared to the A10. Yes the football teams left, but of equal consideration was bolting ESPN for more money with FS1.

Agreed 100%. We're moving to an entertainment business that will be based on a la carte choices, many of which will be online only services. How many channels on your current cable or satellite package do you have that you don't even watch? Imagine being able to pick and choose what you want by individual channels and having a monthly bill based on that. This is where premium sports coverage is heading and ESPN3 is leading the way for it. Its a lucrative deal because the MAC gets exposure on what will be the future of entertainment consumption, and MAC fans have a place to watch their favorite school's events.

[hammb]

The number of people on this board who decry streaming in favor of traditional television is amazing. I've thought I was in prehistoric times by the number of people who have dropped their form of cable altogether. ESPN3 and streaming is where the growth is, not traditional teevee.

All things being equal, I'd rather be with ESPN. It's a love-hate relationship, but people look at you differently if you're not with them. The Big East has every men's basketball home game on Fox Sports 1 and a lot of people last year viewed them as some kind of mid major. It was being compared to the A10. Yes the football teams left, but of equal consideration was bolting ESPN for more money with FS1.

Agreed 100%. We're moving to an entertainment business that will be based on a la carte choices, many of which will be online only services. How many channels on your current cable or satellite package do you have that you don't even watch? Imagine being able to pick and choose what you want by individual channels and having a monthly bill based on that. This is where premium sports coverage is heading and ESPN3 is leading the way for it. Its a lucrative deal because the MAC gets exposure on what will be the future of entertainment consumption, and MAC fans have a place to watch their favorite school's events.

I'm not so sure that we're any closer to a la carte entertainment than we've ever been, and I definitely don't think espn3 is a step in that direction. Quite the opposite, in fact. Espn is the entity that serves to lose the very most by moving to any sort of a ka carte model. They are currently far and away the largest cost on your cable bill, and while sports fans like us shrug at that, there are a lot of grandmas out there that count the espn networks as those channels they never watch.

Moreover espn 3 is a very tightly controlled streaming service that further rapes cable providers (and thus consumers) with large fees to provide the service and limits it to fewer people...it doesn't even have a pay to watch model...it's 100% based on contracts signed with ISPs...many of which require you to also use that cable provider to actually view espn3 (time warner certainly does).

I'm certainly no old curmudgeon..I'm a very tech savvy mid 30s male. I understand and like streaming media. I recognize it has a lot of advantages over current cable/satellite packages, but it also has a lot of disadvantages. Primarily it is more of a pita. There is no consistent ui to view all content, even if you do have devices that can access it all. It's also very dependent on the current model of unlimited, unfiltered home data connections. If the Supreme Court doesn't change their minds on net neutrality streaming is going to be taking a serious blow. Remember all the companies that are losing money by people ditching cable are still the ISPs in many instances...they'll be looking to get that revenue back ASAP.

But back to the Mac deal, I'm also very curious how many games espn3 will be carrying. I believe all bg hoops games (or a vast majority) have been streamed in years past. That's a service I loved and would have gladly paid for if they had charged for it. Now I will be completely s**t out from watching any streams, and I have a hunch there will be a lot fewer games available for those that can still watch them. Espn is big evil business and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if part of the value to them in this deal is shutting down free hoops streams that they see as competition to their existing tv channels...

[AyZiggy97]

The number of people on this board who decry streaming in favor of traditional television is amazing. I've thought I was in prehistoric times by the number of people who have dropped their form of cable altogether. ESPN3 and streaming is where the growth is, not traditional teevee.

All things being equal, I'd rather be with ESPN. It's a love-hate relationship, but people look at you differently if you're not with them. The Big East has every men's basketball home game on Fox Sports 1 and a lot of people last year viewed them as some kind of mid major. It was being compared to the A10. Yes the football teams left, but of equal consideration was bolting ESPN for more money with FS1.

Agreed 100%. We're moving to an entertainment business that will be based on a la carte choices, many of which will be online only services. How many channels on your current cable or satellite package do you have that you don't even watch? Imagine being able to pick and choose what you want by individual channels and having a monthly bill based on that. This is where premium sports coverage is heading and ESPN3 is leading the way for it. Its a lucrative deal because the MAC gets exposure on what will be the future of entertainment consumption, and MAC fans have a place to watch their favorite school's events.

I'm not so sure that we're any closer to a la carte entertainment than we've ever been, and I definitely don't think espn3 is a step in that direction. Quite the opposite, in fact. Espn is the entity that serves to lose the very most by moving to any sort of a ka carte model. They are currently far and away the largest cost on your cable bill, and while sports fans like us shrug at that, there are a lot of grandmas out there that count the espn networks as those channels they never watch.

Moreover espn 3 is a very tightly controlled streaming service that further rapes cable providers (and thus consumers) with large fees to provide the service and limits it to fewer people...it doesn't even have a pay to watch model...it's 100% based on contracts signed with ISPs...many of which require you to also use that cable provider to actually view espn3 (time warner certainly does).

I'm certainly no old curmudgeon..I'm a very tech savvy mid 30s male. I understand and like streaming media. I recognize it has a lot of advantages over current cable/satellite packages, but it also has a lot of disadvantages. Primarily it is more of a pita. There is no consistent ui to view all content, even if you do have devices that can access it all. It's also very dependent on the current model of unlimited, unfiltered home data connections. If the Supreme Court doesn't change their minds on net neutrality streaming is going to be taking a serious blow. Remember all the companies that are losing money by people ditching cable are still the ISPs in many instances...they'll be looking to get that revenue back ASAP.

But back to the Mac deal, I'm also very curious how many games espn3 will be carrying. I believe all bg hoops games (or a vast majority) have been streamed in years past. That's a service I loved and would have gladly paid for if they had charged for it. Now I will be completely s**t out from watching any streams, and I have a hunch there will be a lot fewer games available for those that can still watch them. Espn is big evil business and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if part of the value to them in this deal is shutting down free hoops streams that they see as competition to their existing tv channels...

I think it's just the opposite: Within 3 to 4 years all MAC rights controlled basketball games will be airing on ESPN3. An unknown amount of olympic sports will also be broadcast, for lack of a better term. Yes that leaves some fans out of luck while providing more access to other fans. I'm not arguing this is a perfect arrangement, but the best one the MAC could get. They renegotiated their ESPN contract, it hadn't expired.

I happen to be in favor of adding the 10 extra years for the additional streaming. It's not like ESPN was going to air a few hundred MAC contests each season and snookered the conference by conveying them to ESPN3. It's content that will now be available instead of having no substantial reach.

I'm not sure how to address concerns over streaming cons, except that broadcast TV wasn't always accepting of cable. And they're still not; even cable stations have carriage disagreements with distributors. But there seems to be an undeniable trend towards streaming because that's what most consumers want.

[footballguy51]

Also, let's not forget that the streaming previously available was usually of low quality, had announcers that barely knew the game let alone the players, and was only ever known about by the people affiliated with the MAC.

[mscarn]

Why does the conference have to choose between coverage on cable and digital streaming platforms? Why can't they have both? In this rapidly changing atmosphere it might also not be the best thing to sign deals locking the league into agreements through 2024.

Is the ESPN imprimatur worth allowing them to pat us on the head and give us our novelty weeknight games with the mildly amusing Twitter moniker while disallowing 3 other cable sports TV networks to show all other MAC vs. MAC games? People should not be able to see high school, FCS and (shudder) Conference USA games with greater convenience than those played in the MAC.

[jpfalcon09]

Why does the conference have to choose between coverage on cable and digital streaming platforms? Why can't they have both? In this rapidly changing atmosphere it might also not be the best thing to sign deals locking the league into agreements through 2024.

Is the ESPN imprimatur worth allowing them to pat us on the head and give us our novelty weeknight games with the mildly amusing Twitter moniker while disallowing 3 other cable sports TV networks to show all other MAC vs. MAC games? People should not be able to see high school, FCS and (shudder) Conference USA games with greater convenience than those played in the MAC.

It seems the MAC has always had a somewhat weird view on how it sees itself in the college sports world. This deal screams that the MAC was scared if they decided to explore other options that ESPN would have backed away from the bargaining table. We'll never know but I wonder if ESPN would only do this deal if it retained exclusivity throughout the term of the contract. I'm not so sure additional exposure on say CBS Sports, NBCSN for FOX Sports 1 would have necessarily been a good thing for the conference as those networks don't even come close to the same viewership levels as ESPN even for non-live events. ESPN is the devil you know when it comes to TV agreements which is why those other networks are having a tough time getting off the ground. The good is that when the new term of this deal kicks in during the 2016-17 season, each MAC school should be bringing home close to $2 million with the TV rights and money from the NCAA playoff agreement.