Texas Longhorns TV Network: UT Inks $300M Deal With ESPN

so it is a 5 year deal at 10M or so and then go from there

I’m really interested in what the reaction will be for these people now since a lot took shots at Texas. Several had very nasty things to say because Texas wanted to keep this opportunity over moving to another conference.

And I don’t care if that irritates anyone on this board. Dammit, no other school in the country could have pulled this off. We are the Joneses.

I do not hate you, but I am very very jealous.

A Major-Harsin hybrid the likes of which the college football world has never seen.

…by the fact that the partnership is with ESPN. I’ll bet I’ll be seeing it in my DirecTV lineup.

Thought it might be on a lower cable tier (i.e., cheaper) in Texas, I bet it will be available on most east coast cable providers if you pony up. The only problem is going to be whether ESPN and the cable companies get into arguments about the fees, a la the Big Ten and NFL networks.

Begins in the Fall and Powers said that he anticipates that the network would be included in basic cable system channels in Tx, Ok, and maybe La and elsewhere it’s likely to be offered as a premium, perhaps part of a sports package or as a stand-alone channel,

And stalking all OL Coaches? They could make a fortune right now.

Someone needs to create a gif for that.

I really like that they’re willing to give academics half of the proceeds in the beginning, especially considering the academic programing is only slated for about 3 hours of the day. Great call by the powers that be. Now, it’s going to be interesting to see how all the haters find a way to spin this just as a PR move and how we’re still evil in the end.

Or some of this stuff.

Replace Wylie workout show with MadDog.

The biggest recruiting advantage any university has EVER had. That’s why tamu and others are pissed. We just guaranteed top recruiting classes in every major and minor sport. If I’m a tennis/baseball/swimming/golf/softball/whatever stud, I now get a chance to be on TV when I have no chance in hell at another school. Do not underestimate how big this is.

Link, please. :-)

I expect the administration (Texas A&M admin) will act appropriately to negotiate their share of the pie.

Ummmm. What share?

Can Garrett Gilbert be the next Tebow?

But, I just can’t believe that ESPN would dive into this sort of deal without THOROUGHLY doing their homework on the ends and outs and are confident it will pay off. I could be wrong, but it seems unlikely that the Disney empire would go all in on a hunch like this.

Is there any other university with a deal like this? Does this make us ’America’s team’?

with approx 8M cable households in Texas and a 80% retention rate and a $0.30 monthly fee (which is pretty low) would provide approximately 23M annually not including advertising..

So there is approximately 8M on a low end. Move it to $0.40 and it is closer to 31M.

There is a lot of room to make up the initial investment and more importantly that the $$ investment should be viewed as not only a startup cost but also a longterm R&D cost for this model to be used in instances such as ND and OU.

If Texas creates this network with ESPN, then it doesn’t go with Fox. And if Texas has this network, it’s less likely that the Big 12 creates its own network with Fox. And ESPN has to pay much less for a Texas network than a Big12 network.

There’s more to value than just dollars generated. A virtual monopoly that prevents Fox from becoming a big player in these sorts of arrangements has to be worth a fair amount of money to ESPN. Plus, there’s always the possibility that Texas goes independent in a few years and actually does make the money back for ESPN.

Does this mean the one or so football game per year that isn’t normally televised (but is available on PPV) is going to be aired? If so, does that mean that literally every Texas football game from now until eternity will be televised?

yes. Every game which would ordinarily go to PPV will be on the network, plus some other OOC games which one would assume would be a FSN type of game (think the Wyoming and UNM games of the world) will be there.

I have to imagine that the fact that we filled up our OOC slate for so many years in advance just before this announcement was not coincidental. I have to assume that many of those agreements came with language which would allow us to offer them on our own network.

It will be interesting to see, once the conference starts renegotiating its TV contacts, if we’ll push for the right to show a conference game on our own network as well.

You can honestly go to every recruit for every major sport and tell them that every, single game will be televised.

With the ESPN/SEC contract, can’t every SEC school already say that? And can’t every Big 10 school say that as well right now?

I think we’re playing catch-up here more than setting a precedent.

We can take Beergut national.

I assume so?

The mother ship, so to speak?

I can only speak for myself, but I am going to JUMP at the opportunity to be able to see more of our baseball games, women’s volleyball, and our (always a national contender) swimming and diving team. I support all of our sports, and I am looking forward to having the opportunity to become more acquainted with the ins and outs of our non revenue generating programs, and I suspect a multitude of Longhorns are in the same boat as me.

Besides, if you read the reports on this, it looks like ESPN is going to try to get this channel worked into various cable packages, which they likely have the clout to accomplish. This means that many people are going to pay for this channel whether the specifically looked to get Bevo-TV or not.

Also, where do you get this number of 38,000? UT has one of the largest alumni bases in the country, if not the world. 38k is quite the low estimate.

Finally, looking at it from that perspective ignores all the residual benefits this network is likely to generate on both sides. For example, the 50% of proceeds that are going to academics are going to help the University during these steep budget cuts coming down from the capital. On ESPN’s end, even if it is ultimately found that they overpaid, from a competition perspective this puts them closer to edging FOX out of the college sports picture. There are obviously more which have been discussed in great detail earlier in this thread, but you get the idea.

It will likely be a basic (or slightly-above-basic) cable channel. Those not in Texas will have to buy a bigger sports package to get it, which isn’t that big of a deal for dedicated fans (a couple of bucks a month for a bunch of sports channels including the Longhorn network), many of whom probably already subscribe to that sports package. You’re thinking of this like HBO or something where you have to specifically subscribe to an individual channel. But you should think of it more like ESPN Classic or ESPN News: a channel that comes on a tier of cable offerings.

Lots of people are going to get the channel, and if they get it, they’re probably going to watch at least some of the programming.

I will not be surprised to a portion of the daytime programming aimed toward high school students. Between the academic programming and the occasional high school game we’ve got a good story, and could probably get “sponsored” programming by selected vendors with limited advertisements.

I wouldn’t be surprised by a mountain of patriotic Texas programming (everything from cooking shows to history themed shows) and high school, UT sporting events. Perhaps even the odd game from another college that cut a deal to avoid PPV. A&M may even have a few televised OOC games, carried by ESPN-UT.

…rather than asking an honest question like you, your buddy Beergut is resorting to tinfoil headgear…

You should really have him checked out.

If the network put on show where they took Bevo around to just eat stuff (see EDSBS parody of our network idea), I would pay to see it. In fact, I would pay to see anything they put on.

Teasips are not 2%ers, unlike quite a few Aggies. We go all in for our Alma mater.

Enjoy the SEC.