Disney-Comcast Enter 10 Year Agreement: Longhorn Network Not A Part of It

This would seem to have been ESPN’s opportunity to break on through with the LHN. Piggy backing that on this big deal that is.

Whatever the plan was, they’ve done a poor job of implementing it.

Admit it longhorn fans, LHN has failed miserably up to and after this point. Deloss you sir are in over your head and mishandled this from the beginning. You continue to get caught with your pants down. How miserable the LHN experience has been!

"We were not able to include Longhorn Network in this agreement, but we continue to have productive conversations with Comcast and other distributors," an ESPN spokeswoman said.

Oh yeah… this.

Productive conversations must lead to a carriage agreement. Nothing less.

I’m going to assume that “productive” conversations are really just expensive lunches 4 and 5-star restaurants in which both sides agree to disagree on the subject regarding LHN.

Should have included an “at” in between “lunches” and “4”.

@mysterious package

How is getting $300 million while ESPN handles trying to find a carrier a bad deal for Texas?

Sure most UT fans have not gotten a chance to partake in LHN yet, but I hardly see it as a failure as the school still gets paid.

Not sure why ESPN didn’t just name the channel ESPN Texas, with Longhorn network as primary programming. That way they could have carried all things Texas. Content could also include High School Football, any state or Private University football game, and any sport related to the State. ESPN could have stepped into the Regional Network space, with all third tear UT content as a major cornerstone.

One Riot:

That’s an easy one. Because ESPN wouldn’t pay Texas $300 million for that, and Texas wouldn’t give ESPN the kind of access they’re getting right now. ESPN Texas couldn’t shamelessly plug all things UT. What makes the LHN so damned special is the branding.

I’m always amazed at the people who look at Disney/cable negotiations and blame DeLoss Dodds when they don’t work out.

Though I’m not amazed that MP is one of those people.

Which one of you was the bullshit artist that kept saying our freshman point guard was so good he was one and done? This guy needs a redshirt if anything.

LHN is failure because no one can see it. Do you understand that? I don’t care how much money our university make and neither should you. The main thing is the product on the field not how much money we make. We (you) are the only people I know that Mediterranean success by how much we profit. What kind of stat is that? Really, how about we beat OU and K-State for once. Tired of hearing about 300M. Wtf does it matter? Just means you get a wall street journal article, say we are the jones’ to an aggy, give Mack Brown a contract extension for the life of the LHN, I could go on and on. We made money before this shitty network and we continue to rake in PUF funding. I don’t need some wankerlike Deloss feeding me BS about the LHN and how it’s such a innovative idea. /rant

• measure success not mediterranean. iPhones

Dodds keeps getting caught with his pants down because he is having a hard time keeping them up with all the weight of 30 million dollars in his pockets. I wish I could get in over my head and walk away with that much money. Keep screwing up Dodds!!!!

MP, chill dude.

CDJ I don’t get LHN why is that? If it’s not the guy who’s idea it was and responsible for its existence then who? I’m betting you know please do shed some light in 4 words or less without making some sort of excuse. You seem pretty sure it’s not Deloss please let us know who else it might be.

Oh my gosh, i love J’Coven Brown!

Let’s just proclaim ourselves the (300) Million Dollar Champion, have our own title belt done up & award it to ourselves, only on a channel nobody gets. We’re the Ted Debiase of college football.

You seem pretty sure it’s not Deloss please let us know who else it might be.

This isn’t rocket science. It is ESPN.

They own the LHN lock, stock and barrel. We may not like their negotiation stance over how much they want from the distributors, but it’s their dime.

And please don’t bother to bitch about Deloss selling out to ESPN.

When this all started a few years ago, we fully expected to have a “Longhorn Network” much like the proposed Sooner Network — and we fully expected to see a limited amount of money from it.

ESPN walked in and said, “We will pay you $300 million over 20 years — we will absorb all productions costs, we will sell it, we will negotiate the distribution of it, and after we make our money in a few years, we will also give you part of the profit”

There isn’t an Athletic Director alive today who wouldn’t take that deal — and if he said “No thanks” he would be fired on the spot.

To call the Longhorn Network a failure at this point is myopic. Of course we are pissed that it is not being distributed across Texas. But this is not a one-year experiment. ESPN knows that for all the bitching people like Mysterious Package and other are doing, when the price fight is resolved they will watch and soon the bad taste of the start will fade away.

That’s what happened with the Big Ten Network — it is also what happened with the NFL Network.

To all the LHN crybabies…stop looking at the LHN as entertainment. At this point this is basically just a huge annual donation to the athletic department. It is $300 million with almost no strings attached. If the university wants to spend every last dime on academic scholarships, I am pretty certain it can.

DeLoss Dodds is like the guy who manages to sell his screenplay to a big-time Hollywood studio.

That screenplay may or may not ever see the light of day, and if it does, any control he has over the process has long since been ceded to the studio, producers, directors, accountants, marketing departments, actors, agents, etc.

Mysterious (and oh so whiney) Package -

Do you consider the Big 10 network an abject failure both then and now, since it also took it roughly 15 months from launch to get carried on major operators? Do you even have a single damn clue about how these things are negotiated? Oh, and the reason we do (and should) care about money is that the primary mission of this university isn’t beating OU on the football field, or giving you bragging rights about how awesome the football team is; it’s serving as the premier research and higher education institution of astate that is the world’s 14th largest economy. This is not, as you continue to scream, simply a matter of UT looking to “line it’s already bulging pockets.” This, instead, is the leadership of our university navigating a 20 year funding plan that looks increasingly challenged, given rapidly shrinking federal research dollars, continued cuts in state funding, increasing legislative pressure not to raise tuition, Title IX requirements for what scholarship sports we’re allowed to have, etc.

And far from “getting caught with his pants down” Dodds was smart to realize his limitations in negotiating directly with cable operators and leave that to a major player like ESPN. The fact that ESPN hasn’t gotten a cable operator to pick it up at the rate they want, when NO ONE with any acumen expected wide-scale distribution in the first year, is inconvenient for you, me and other longhorn fans, but that’s all it is. Maybe if Dodds had chosen to try to negotiate directly with the operators with this result, I could see some vitriol thrown his way, but he did, you know, the EXACT FUCKING OPPOSITE of that.

Jesus fucking christ. I thought BC prided itself on a commenting base that was smarter than this. /rant

Just to throw a little support to Mysterious, I’ll weigh in. I get the arguments of tx2step, CJD, srr50, and I acknowledge them. But comparing LHN to Big Ten network, is a little bit disingenuous, because LHN is aimed at a consumer market roughly 1/12th the size, and that’s only if you consider the student/alumni base. Pure population numbers? I’m betting if you add up the populations of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, etc., the disparity is even more apparent.

It’s a niche-market network, with fairly narrow appeal. You think Comcast cares if the same 25 jerks in Houston, myself included, keep calling demanding they add it? No. And because it’s a niche market, the threat of those same 25 people threatening to switch somewhere else doesn’t hold a lot of water either.

And we KNOW TWC doesn’t give two shits what any of their consumers want. See NFL Network.

So let’s all abandon the idea that the Big Ten network or the NFL Networki are viable models or comparisons for LHN. It’s as dumb as Aggy thinking they can be successful in the SEC because Arkansas has had such stunning success there.

And not for nothing, but when you take two of thirteen annual marketable properties (football games), and basically restrict viewership to the 100k in attendance and another round million elsewhere, that’s an epic fail, and there’s simply no argument that it isn’t. (Now, just to prove me wrong, somebody make the argument anyway).

When you make it harder for people to see something they care about, they invariably start to care a little less. That damages your brand. And it could have been so easily solved with a web simulcast or ppv option!

THAT’S where it’s ok to be mad at Deloss. For not safeguarding UT’s interests by making sure that one way or the other, those games were visible.

I like most people around here thought the LHN would just pop up and all the cable providers would line up to carry the network. Then I remembered about the NFL Network… I heard all about the NFL Network for almost 2 years and finally Comcast started carrying it! Then in order to get it… I had to pay extra to get the upper tier sports stations. Now 8 years later, it’s interwoven into the basic sports package. Give me the LHN and let me pay for it…

Exactly HotRod, and that was a network with national appeal. Here’s HOPING we get the opportunity to pay extra for the damn thing at some point.

Not complicated. A review of the basics:

ESPN wants cable operators to pay it X-$ / head for its local channels, the same way it gets paid for its current channels. ESPN believes those products will help cable operators persuade customers to upgrade their monthly bills. Cable operators believe they already get as much out of their customers as they can.

If you can see the Big 10 Network, you’re paying a monthly subscription fee for it. It’s bundled into whatever “tier” you’re receiving, but you’re paying for it.

So what’s going to change a cable operator’s mind? Diminished subscriptions as people move to wireless. Content that cannot easily scale into wireless bandwidth becomes a cable operator’s Holy Grail, and content unique to the cable operator becomes even more desirable (a business fact of life which brought HBO back from the brink). ESPN thinks LHN (and products like it) will become more attractive to cable operators over time as sports programming increasingly becomes the sole reason anyone pays for cable TV anymore. We jumped ship on cable/satellite two years ago. My sole regret in that decision is the occasional football game that I cannot get over my HD antenna.

So LHN’s a very big pawn in a very long waiting game. That’s why it’s a 20 year deal, and 20 years is the reason ESPN had to overpay Deloss to commit to that sort of window.

So let’s all abandon the idea that the Big Ten network or the NFL Networki are viable models or comparisons for LHN. It’s as dumb as Aggy thinking they can be successful in the SEC because Arkansas has had such stunning success there.

No lets don’t abandon the idea that they are strong>similar models.

Of course the LHN is a niche market — so is the Big 10 Network. The fight over the LHN is basically in Texas and the surrounding areas — the DMA’s — Dominant Markets of Influence.

The fight is over the same basic principle. How much is this niche channel worth in the areas where it has interest. ESPN thinks its worth at least 40 cents per subscriber — the carriers don’t.

The Big 10 Network thought it was worth almost $1 per subscriber when it started — the carriers didn’t agree. It took them a year to finally settle on a mutually agreeable price.

The LHN is different in this way — this is ESPN trying to throw its weight around and establish a price floor for something (I believe) they plan to expand into other areas and teams. The distributors are balking because they also see this as a coming wave of new expenses, and they are battling to force such channels off basic digital packages.

THAT’S where it’s ok to be mad at Deloss. For not safeguarding UT’s interests by making sure that one way or the other, those games were visible.

I get that, it’s a valid point.

But the rants about “only caring about $$$$, and getting caught with your pants down” are old and tired.

Texas was working on a network to help promote all sports regionally, as well as give an outlet for the occasional football game that wasn’t picked up by the network partners. It was seen as a possible money maker somewhere down the line.

Then ESPN came and offered to play up to $20 million a year, plus take all the risk in production and distribution.

 What CEO of any company would turn down that offer.

Understand both arguments. It’s just frustrating for the fans if they can’t see the games on cable. It’s basically a two game blackout. And for 300 million, I’d be fine with that. Especially since I expect ESPN will resolve the issue or it wouldn’t be much of a business proposition.

But the rants about "only caring about $$$$, and getting caught with your pants down" are old and tired.

The rant that Dodds only cares about $$$$ may be old and tired, but that doesn’t make it any less true. DeLoss has a long of history of demonstrating the almight dollar is first and foremost in his priorities, and the fans desires only get met when they happen to align with Dodd’s financial goals.

All I know is that while Dodd’s is stuffing his pockets we’ll be waiting years to get this network and see the games relegated to it. Meanwhile I’ll be sitting here in Texas watching the Sooner Network along with lots of Texas kids OU is recruiting.

And lastly, I think this approach to pushing for distribution of the network is all wrong. The business model they should be using is to give it to cable providers right now at a low cost, build up a base of viewership for it, and then start raising the price. The cable providers are then in a position where they don’t want to piss off an established viewership. ESPN meanwhile would be getting some amount of return on their investment immediately, as opposed to what they have now where they’re getting basically nothing for who knows how long.

TexanNick -

A few points, though SRR has made them already:

First, it’s not disingenuous at all to compare the Big10 network to LHN, as that’s the closest comparable that exists. The PAC network has Scott negotiating directly with the operators, whereas Delaney ceded the carriage negotiations to Fox. So, the Big10 network provides the best example of what it might take, both in terms of effort and in terms of time, to get wide-scale distribution done.

Second, while I don’t know whether your 20:1 ratio is correct or not, the number works against you, not for you. IOW, having 1/20th the target market makes it less attractive, not more, to the cable operators; drives the price down, not up; etc. So, one would logically expect that getting distribution agreements in place will take more time, not less, which makes it even sillier to declare LHN an abject failure after 4 months when it took the closest (but by your own math much more attractive) comparable 15.

I worked with a number of Big10 alumni when the Big10 network was in its infancy, and they were all absolutely convinced then that the Big10 network was the worst idea of all time. The arguments then were very much the arguments now, which really amount to: I can’t see the game I want to see, therefore this is a failure. Some are still pissed, others aren’t, but the fact remains that the network itself is a success and most of the grit-eating world doesn’t even remember the drama.

Finally, you cede the distribution negotiations or you don’t. Even setting ownership aside, there’s no half-pregnant model where the school (in the case of LHN) or conference (in the case of Big10 network) could maintain streaming rights while the partner negotiates with the operators, since one necessarily undermines the other. I fundamentally agree that a lack of streaming is a mistake, and indeed agree that pursuing a two-decade old model of distribution for next-generation content is a mistake. That ire, however, is much more appropriately sent ESPN’s way rather than Dodds’s or the UT administration’s.

Had Dodds decided that, despite having neither the background nor the industry contacts, he could forego ESPN’s offer and negotiate on his own with cable operators, then he would have been guilty of the very thing you, MP and others are accusing him of. Again, he did the exact opposite of that.

Of course, it’s anecdotal, but I’m with srr50. I JUST cut the cord with AT&T cable after the college football regular season ended. Live sports is the ONLY thing I think I’ll miss, and I can still get a dose of it via over-the-air broadcasts and ESPN3 internet. I’m serious when I say I probably wouldn’t have left in the first place if the LHN were available to me. It would have been an attractive draw, and cutting the cord into the unknown was hard enough.
Will I come back when LHN becomes available? Maybe—maybe not. Now that I’ve seen what’s available WITHOUT cable, I’m not sure there’s a value argument to be made for cable today.
Would I pay a $5 a month subscription for internet access to LHN? Yep. Please.

And just by the way, the point of the Comcast negotiations was to bring Comcast into the streaming-content fold, such that Comcast subscribers can access espn3.com, the watchespn app, etc. Adding new Disney content to the basic carriage tier was never indicated as being anywhere near in-scope for this negotiation. IOW, this is the houston chronicle swatting the nest but otherwise an utter non-story with respect to LHN.

One final point. The $$$ arguments about Dodds are old and tired, not because they’re not true, but because it’s exactly what he should be doing. Indeed, it’s not only appropriate for Dodds to keep a steady eye on both the top and bottom line of the athletics program, it’s goddamn necessary, especially given the larger macro-economic picture. The fact that he has managed the program in such a way that not only pulls its own economic weight, but also gives back to the academic side of ledger is something to celebrate, not denigrate.

I still don’t get the NFL Network - I have TWC. Not that I care much as the NFL mostly sucks. Some of these things can go on forever.

Srr50 and tx2step:

I don’t think we’re necessarily arguing about substance. To be clear, I’m not advocating a “Deloss is only interested in money” argument, though if I were, I couldn’t do it as convincingly as Nunna.

And yes, Big Ten Network is also a niche market deal, but it’s a “niche” that’s orders of magnitude larger than LHN. I’m not arguing that this makes it MORE attractive to distributors, but LESS, especially given the wireless/broadband paradigm coming into play. So yeah, it might take a few years to get going, longer than Big Ten.

And that’s not a problem unless the consequences damage your brand, as I believe they do, by taking 2/13th’s of your season, and making it unwatchable. Especially given the timing of the team’s rebuild.

So I’m not arguing LHN is a failure, or that Deloss was wrong to make the deal,mor anything like that. I fully expect LHN to be successful in the long run.

But there have been real and identifiable costs to LHN and it’s implementation, costs we may not be done paying for, example being conference realignment. I think that rational arguments can be made about those, with well thought ideas on both sides.

What makes the LHN so damned special is the branding

I think that advantage is lost without it getting decent carriage, however.

I’m surprised, I expected this to be the moment where ESPN threw their weight around and gave an ultimatum that providers would have to carry the LHN if they wanted other ESPN networks, or at least would’ve made it financially beneficial to the carriers if they did buy into the LHN.

To measure just financial “success” of DD’s, uhm, “strategy”, shouldn’t we be looking at total TV dollars UT makes?

So PAC 12 schools just signed a deal that pays each school $21 million/yr, if I understand correctly. I don’t know to what extent schools get to keep third-tier rights, I assume they kept them, does anyone know?

And the Big-12 locked into a Fox deal last year (same time as I guess the LHN negotiations were going on) worth what, combined with ESPN, pays $155 million/yr, or $15.5 million.

So combined with LHN, Texas gets about $27/28 million/yr for its TV rights. So that’s about $6/7 million more than PAC-12 schools, who may actually receive a bit more than that if they can in fact sell their thrid tier rights. So that’s good.

But that amount for the Pac-12 was negotiated without Texas (or OU/tech/OSU) being in the PAC-16.

So the interesting question for me is, what would THAT contract have looked like? Because I have to believe that adding those teams would have required a much higher payout for the league. Maybe an extra $80 million or so, or $5 million per team?

So by paying UT $12 million/yr to “stay put”, how much did ESPN save for its PAC-12 negotiation? $70 mn/yr? More?

Hey this is just idle speculation, and maybe my math is all wrong please feel free to correct me but it seems that had TX moved to the PAC-16, it could have been making about the same money it is making now, and still kept its third tier rights to remarket. I don’t know if ESPN would be paying $12 mn/year for them if my speculation is correct, but surely Texas all-in would have made more by moving to the PAC-16 than by staying put.

ESPN seems to be the real winner here to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. Thats real oney, right? And Texas is basically stuck for now at least in an unappealing conference when it could be with Stanford, USC, CAL, etc.

Again, all just speculation.

LHN is an experiment in how to market Tier 3 rights. The conversion from analog broadcasting to digital has greatly reduced the cost of broadcasting and broadcasters are looking for content.

No school knows what business model is the best for college Tier 3 rights. ESPN decided to see how a single school branded network would work. Why is this so difficult for people to understand? Once a highly successful model is discovered, it will be the model of choice for a select set of schools that can implement the model.

Who cares if LHN is the eventual model of choice for major universities. While the broadcasting industry is in the experimental phase, we are already a clear winner. Once a better option is available, we will be well positioned to take advantage of it. There is no success of failure for LHN. There is simply the information gained by trying the experiment and using that information in developing a model that works for schools similarly suited to UT. LHN does nothing to harm the UT brand. It simply shows the administration is willing to work to find new and innovative ways to gain exposure to UT athletics.

Regardless of the future of LHN, we will get enhanced access to UT athletics in both major sports and Olympic sports. Relax, people. Broadcasting college sports is in an evolutionary state due to changes in technology. It will all get sorted out. When it is all sorted out at least we will be able to say we were at the forefront of change. As a leading academic institution, that is where we should be.

I have seen the LHN at a friends house and it is great! He went to OU and gets it but I can’t! Still a good deal moneywise for UT.

Longhorn NY: Both the Pac and the Big Ten own the schools’ Tier 3 rights. IIRC, ESPN bought the ACC Tier 3. The SEC and B12 Tier 3 remain (at least for now, in the SEC) the property of the individual schools.

That’s a major reason why Texas wanted the LHN: Longhorn golf, tennis, swimming, etc., wouldn’t make it on a B12 network.

TexanNick -

There is no question that LHN is a reach and has risks and opportunity costs associated with it. Interestingly, I think you may be more optimistic about the LHN’s long-term prospects than I am. I too am concerned about conference alignment, though honestly the notion that ESPN would not be in the mix for first and second tier UT content is almost unthinkable; so in that respect the deal carries less risk than a similar deal with, say, CBS or NBC.

I don’t think the football program really took a hit, either in terms of brand or interest, since there were enough questions around the program this year to drive interest irrespective of the Rice/Kansas games. I do believe that the men’s BB program has taken a hit this year, due simply to most fans not being able to watch the majority of the games played thus far.

I don’t like those costs any more than you do, but the bulk of it goes to wishing ESPN had taken a different tact rather than wishing UT had. Essentially, the the UT administration three options: 1) own the rights, produce all the content and negotiate itself with the operators for distribution (the PAC model in very rough terms), 2) own the rights, split production costs and cede distribution to a partner (the BIG, again very rough), or 3) sell the rights and let the buyer worry about both production and distribution. Option 1) is the only option that would have given UT control over early streaming (to, as you say, protect the brand), but it fails the giggle test. My own personal preference would be for option 2), but it has risks of its own and I’ve frankly no knowledge or data that a scenario like that was on the negotiating table.

So, we’re left with 3). My own best guess is that the chance of wild success (defined as getting the accelerators laid out in the contract) is somewhere south of 30% and even moderate success on a 7-10 year time frame is somewhere south of 40%. Those are the risks you take when you reach, when (for lack of a better analogy) you coach to win rather than not-to-lose. And the simple fact that a play didn’t work doesn’t mean the play call itself was bad (I can just hear Scipio yelling IT’S ABOUT CONTEXT GODDAMMIT).

ESPN seems to have no real idea who the fuck their actual audience is. They’re trying to stuff their schlongs down the cable/sat companies’ throats instead of looking at who’s gonna buy the damn ticket to ride.

I’m very curious to know what they learned from that one-weekend experiment, if anything. I watched, liked it, even emailed them to say “Hey, sign me up for the online version - I’d pay as much as these dipshit bloggers are asking - you know, five or ten bucks a month, maybe… Let me know when you do this, I’d like to have a member number at least as low as my UTEX Life Member number. Hello? Hello? Anyone in there? Why did you do this? What did you learn?”

I mean, wtf? I pay NetFlix $8 a month so my wife can watch European movies, I’d pay even more to tune in all things UT. There’s gotta be a few more - maybe there’s not enough to pay for the whole LHN, but I’ll bet there’s enough to show the viability to the cable/sats… anybody got some business plan data on this?

This is not good. This was supposed to be the hammer.

University gets $300M we miss 2 games that is a geat trade off. Are we even sure those games would have been televised anyway? I guess in most in-state markets they would be.

$300M is still worth it for the school. Go to the game if you want to see it that bad. Even better really support the team and buy season tickets and you can see all the games. Heck the 2 games you will miss I will probably sell you my tickets for those.

Added benefit, once we finally get distribution of LHN we will get many additional hours of sports entertainment overload.

We are 4.5 months into a 20 year deal. You guys saying the deal is a disaster probably sold your Apple stock in 1980.

Big Al: Can you explain your reasoning on LHN increasing exposure to date? I’d agree it’s generated publicity, but not so much of it was good. What it DOES have is POTENTIAL for exposure. But I bet if you asked Rick Barnes right now, he’d tell you the exposure is WAY down. (He might not complain, given the record, but still). With non-revenue sports, there’s NO argument that one iota of extra exposure has been realized.

LonghormNY: Interesting take! We know that ABC/ESPN stepped in to offer big money in 2010 to prevent conference realignment. Maybe LHN represents a continuation of that strategy. In that case, it may that ESPN has no real incentive to push for carriage agreements. Which explains the ridiculous price point.

Tx2step: You make your points well, and it’s hard to quantify, so I can’t definitively say that there has brand damage done to this point. As to your three outlined options, I don’t really understand why those are the only 3 on the board. How about a little language in the agreement that gives rights to actual events (as opposed to studio shows) reverting to UT to be simulcast as pay per view events in the event that carriage didn’t reach certain levels by X date? In other words, create actual incentive to PUSH these properties. I’m not saying the play call was bad, and it may as yet work out.

It’d be nice if this thing were about more than just football, but when the well-informed are telling us not to expect substantive action until NEXT football season, that tells me this is ALL about football, and the non-revenue sports can go to hell. The basketball and other coverage isn’t enough to induce carriers to sign up, and whoever at ESPN sets the price point probably should have realized that between the Rice and Kansas games, and made an adjustment then.

Interesting study on the value of CFB programs: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203462304577138611484143588.html?mod=WSJ_LifeStyle_Lifestyle_5#project%3DCOUNT010520120105%26articleTabs%3Darticle

Texas #1 with a bullet, but the SEC is the premier $ conference.

TexanNick -

The lock/stock/barrel ownership of tier-3 rights makes it all moot, of course, but setting that aside I think the basic answer to your question is because streaming of the live event would have removed the primary negotiating lever that ESPN had with the operators. That’s why the Big10 Network (again, the closest comparable we have) didn’t look to make those football games available beyond whatever operators had picked them up. The pain that causes the fain base is what gets them carried.

That said, one of the reasons I would have picked 2) had Dodds called me for my opinion like he should have done is that it would’ve given UT at least some flexibility to show the game later. I was at the Kansas game but would love to re-watch it. Family and work conflicts caused me to miss the Rice game, so beyond the crappy veetle feed I still haven’t had the opportunity to watch that game. It’s a bummer, and I’d pay to see both games even now (maybe especially now, with no other CFB to watch), but when you don’t own the rights you don’t own the rights.

As to the non-revenue sports’ going to hell, I think that falls mainly on the fanbase. I would expect that ESPN’s dream LHN content right now would be content that is a) in demand and b) non-controversial to air. Football is obviously high-demand, but was also highly controversial and will never be more than 2-ish games per year anyway. Basketball seemed like the worst of all worlds, since it still garnered the “ESPN is cheating with the iiers!” bad blood, but the fanbase largely shrugged when they couldn’t see the games. Maybe baseball this spring, but we’re frankly already conditioned to only seeing 5-ish% of the baseball games UT plays. It’s a bit of a stereotype, but I think soccer could generate some pretty strong demand through south Texas, but that means making men’s soccer a scholarship sport which (of course) brings Title IX into play.

It’s a bit of a sticky wicket. I don’t think ESPN blinks on price until 18-24 months post-launch, which means we’re likely to have several of these blog posts before it’s over.

In the end, Big Al’s approach is probably the most sensible one. Rather than thinking of it in terms of success vs failure, just think of it in terms of conducting an experiment to gather data. There were no doubt risks and costs that the university shouldered for running the experiment; but by and large they’re risks and costs for which we were well compensated. In the end, we’ll get the data, and it will prove valuable in terms of making an informed decision about what to do next.

If they wanted to threaten everyone into accepting LHN in a bundle with the rest of their channels, this is not a good move on ESPN’s part. I fully expect other providers to simply point to this deal in negotiations. I think they set themselves back here. They might want to consider a new strategy.

It really seems to me that point of LHN from ESPN’s perspective was to keep the Big 12 intact by locking Texas in place.

They probably saved a billion plus on their Pac12 contracts by not having Texas join into an expanded PAC 16.

One point of leverage the Big 10 network had over the LHN is that DirectTV was on board at launch. Our biggest carrier was FIOS.

With ESPN choosing not to bundle the LHN in this Comcast deal, puts the chances of wide distribution before next football season at zero.