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Topic: Bowl game nonsense
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Bobcat Love's Sense of Shame
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Bobcat Love's Sense of Shame
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Posted: 12/13/2023 8:37 AM
Tymaster wrote:expand_more
There aren't more bowls bc nobody watches. It's quite the opposite. Barstool Bowl last year had 1 million in-app views. And as we remember - bc the boomers threw a daily fit about it - the game was streamed. Nearly a million people pulled out their phones and tablets to watch OU football in a watered down spring game.
The Barstool bowl maxed out at 130,000 concurrent viewers, and 500,000 unique viewers during the course of the game. That's well below what a game aired on TV would see.
In your rush to own me, you skipped over the point.

This is a thread entitled "bowl game nonsense" about how everyones hates bowls.

In my rebut, I pointed out that 500,000 unique viewers (thank you) pulled out their phone to watch what another gentlemen called a spring game. It IS well below what you would hope a game aired on TV would see - that's also the point.

The appetite for games some are deeming as inconsequential and meaningless draw 500,000 eyeballs to a random website to watch, and will still have at least a million eyeballs on their TV screens at 11AM on Saturday.
Sorry, my main points are not that most people hate bowl games, but that there are too many bowls as evidenced by the fact that there aren’t even enough .500 teams available to play in them, their locations don’t make a lot of sense as far as a winter break and there’s a lot of pressure from different fronts making it difficult to field teams that represent who the teams were during the season. I like bowl games and watch bowl games (certainly not all of them by any means), but it’s seems crazy to me to see the turmoil churning around college football and the bowl season. Let’s see how the ratings are this year to judge if there’s any reason to be concerned about what’s happening. Maybe, maybe not.

Fair enough.
I'm curious to see what becomes of the bowl games once we settle on the playoff. My hunch is they are much less interesting to the masses. The other side of that coin is that even at half a million viewers or so, that is a great deal of eyeballs for what is now called "appointment viewing" and will still have a lot of appeal to advertisers. People just don't settle in front of the television for many live things these days other than sports, really. A sitcom or drama or talk show even - you can DVR that or watch it on Hulu or Peacock or whatever. That doesn't work so well for a hockey match or a football contest. Time will tell.
You're right that there are so few live TV opportunities to sell to advertisers that that probably keeps bowls afloat for longer than the fan interest might otherwise suggest.

But ESPN owns the largest percentage of bowls -- meaning that they actually own and operate them, not that they own the TV rights. I believe they're the operator for 26% of bowls -- that includes most of the third tier bowls this thread is talking about. And ESPN is struggling.

Cord-cutting is hitting them hard, and they're moving fast to a d2c model. Plan is to launch that in 2025. That's not a sign of a thriving commercial sales business. There's real risk to the ESPN owned bowls if subscription numbers don't end up where they expect, and the playoff cuts into fam interest.

Remember that MLB is struggling to find regional broadcast partners for a third of their teams, and the last company to own those rights went under mid-season despite a stream of gaming revenue alongside the broadcast business. There value of those eyeballs at the volume were talking is lower than one might think. Hence ESPN getting into the gaming space themselves.
Tymaster
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Location: Chillicothe, OH
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Posted: 12/13/2023 9:18 AM
Bobcat Love's Sense of Shame wrote:expand_more
There aren't more bowls bc nobody watches. It's quite the opposite. Barstool Bowl last year had 1 million in-app views. And as we remember - bc the boomers threw a daily fit about it - the game was streamed. Nearly a million people pulled out their phones and tablets to watch OU football in a watered down spring game.
The Barstool bowl maxed out at 130,000 concurrent viewers, and 500,000 unique viewers during the course of the game. That's well below what a game aired on TV would see.
In your rush to own me, you skipped over the point.

This is a thread entitled "bowl game nonsense" about how everyones hates bowls.

In my rebut, I pointed out that 500,000 unique viewers (thank you) pulled out their phone to watch what another gentlemen called a spring game. It IS well below what you would hope a game aired on TV would see - that's also the point.

The appetite for games some are deeming as inconsequential and meaningless draw 500,000 eyeballs to a random website to watch, and will still have at least a million eyeballs on their TV screens at 11AM on Saturday.
Sorry, my main points are not that most people hate bowl games, but that there are too many bowls as evidenced by the fact that there aren’t even enough .500 teams available to play in them, their locations don’t make a lot of sense as far as a winter break and there’s a lot of pressure from different fronts making it difficult to field teams that represent who the teams were during the season. I like bowl games and watch bowl games (certainly not all of them by any means), but it’s seems crazy to me to see the turmoil churning around college football and the bowl season. Let’s see how the ratings are this year to judge if there’s any reason to be concerned about what’s happening. Maybe, maybe not.

Fair enough.
I'm curious to see what becomes of the bowl games once we settle on the playoff. My hunch is they are much less interesting to the masses. The other side of that coin is that even at half a million viewers or so, that is a great deal of eyeballs for what is now called "appointment viewing" and will still have a lot of appeal to advertisers. People just don't settle in front of the television for many live things these days other than sports, really. A sitcom or drama or talk show even - you can DVR that or watch it on Hulu or Peacock or whatever. That doesn't work so well for a hockey match or a football contest. Time will tell.
You're right that there are so few live TV opportunities to sell to advertisers that that probably keeps bowls afloat for longer than the fan interest might otherwise suggest.

But ESPN owns the largest percentage of bowls -- meaning that they actually own and operate them, not that they own the TV rights. I believe they're the operator for 26% of bowls -- that includes most of the third tier bowls this thread is talking about. And ESPN is struggling.

Cord-cutting is hitting them hard, and they're moving fast to a d2c model. Plan is to launch that in 2025. That's not a sign of a thriving commercial sales business. There's real risk to the ESPN owned bowls if subscription numbers don't end up where they expect, and the playoff cuts into fam interest.

Remember that MLB is struggling to find regional broadcast partners for a third of their teams, and the last company to own those rights went under mid-season despite a stream of gaming revenue alongside the broadcast business. There value of those eyeballs at the volume were talking is lower than one might think. Hence ESPN getting into the gaming space themselves.

I'd counter that once ESPN gets away from linear television they may wish to keep the bowls around as they'll want exclusive content to justify what will probably be a $20-$35 monthly fee. ESPN makes most of their money off of cable subscribers who may or may not watch the channel at all. We know sports fans are going to subscribe. They have no problem paying $200 or more for cable bundles to get channels like FS2 and CBS Sports Network but are there enough of them to keep up ESPN's profitibality when it inevitably becomes a stand-alone streaming operation? Or, perhaps to your point, they'll realize that their expensive to pay for regular season and playoff packages from the NHL/NBA/NFL and NCAA are enough content to entice subscribers and won't spend anymore money on what may seem superfluous. Time will tell and that time is coming. The transfer portal is going to kill average fan interest in these bowls is my prediction. I think you'll still see the MAC Champion and probably the runner up getting bowl invites but the days of sending half the conference to bowls even with 5-7 and 6-6 records is only going to last another year or so.
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