Are NCAA conferences close to media rights consolidation?

College Football Enquirer co-hosts Ross Dellenger, Andy Staples and Steven Godfrey discuss the potential fallout from a secret meeting about future media rights and customized schedules. Check out the full conversation on the “College Football Enquirer” podcast – and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.

Video Transcript

Today in Dallas, there is a meeting with one of those external groups, Smash Sports, which is, kind of a, I guess a subsidiary of Smash Capital, which is a private equity group, that’s run by former ESPN executives with a sort of a new model for college athletics.

But that’s all built around amending the Sports Broadcasting Act to allow all the FBS conferences to consolidate media rights, number one, thus giving schools more money.

And number two, optimizing schedules so you have more power conference versus power conference, non-conference games that, again, produce more money.

And then number three, a new governance model that would be blessed in this, at least in their plan, by Congress and would grant the NCAA, at least in the conferences or this new government model, legal protection.

So anyway, in Dallas today, a bunch of board members right from, from even from the Big Ten and SEC are there, and a couple of school presidents, including one from LSU is there, talking about a model that their own league, right, the SEC and Big Ten, wrote a white paper and released last week refuting that model and, arguing against it.

It’s almost as if the people who don’t have as much money and don’t have as much power would like to do something that shifts the balance of power and the people who have all the power and the most money would like to not do the thing that might bring in more money to the people who don’t have as much money and might shift the balance of power.

It’s, it’s funny.

But what I find hilarious about this, Ross, is both parties, the people who want to consolidate the TV rights, which by the way, despite what the SEC and Big Ten tell you, will make more money.

If you have taken a basic economics class, you know that if somebody gets a monopoly, they can charge more and this would allow them to have a legal monopoly.

Yeah, it would want for that.

Yeah.

It would want that for clarity.

Yeah.

It will, it would also lessen the ga- lessen the gap, which is what they’re concerned about.

They just don’t want to say that.

Now, here’s the thing.

Let’s, let’s broad strokes, widen out.

Sports Broadcasting Act.

Law passed in the ’60s allows professional sports leagues to sell their TV rights as one.

College can’t do that.

That’s why the SEC sells them separately and the Big Ten sells them separately.

And so if you were allowed to do that, there’d be all of them selling the rights at once, like the NFL does.

Maybe all of them selling postseason and the regular season at once, which is what would make the real money.

And to Ross’s point, probably more centralized scheduling, probably what TV would consider better games because you’re gonna charge TV a premium for those.

This all sounds like stuff the consumer would actually enjoy.

Are NCAA conferences close to media rights consolidation?

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