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If you’re one of those people who struggles to understand the Indianapolis Colts’ addition to the AFC South every time, you’re probably having a hard time keeping up with the recent changes in the landscape. But the confusing mass migration that has caused the Big Ten to grow to 18 member schools promises to be a godsend for television rights holders.
Together, the SEC and the Big Ten could exceed the 50 percent limit on all college attendance in 2024.
Enhanced enrichment, of course, has been the driving force behind everything that has happened in and around college sports since, well, since time immemorial, although the schools and networks really got into a tight spot in 1984 after the Supreme Court ruled that the NCAA’s oversight of football’s television contracts violated antitrust laws. It’s probably no coincidence that the most profound upheavals at the conference level occurred after the NCAA lost its case, and for the schools and their media partners, the timing couldn’t have been better. (The Supreme Court issued its 7-2 ruling in NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma just weeks after ABC completed its purchase of a 15 percent stake in ESPN, which at the time was available in about 34 million U.S. households.)
By consolidating 67 of the nation’s 69 top programs into four supersized conferences, college football has achieved a kind of catch-all, a respite before the next series of upheavals inevitably catapults it into its final, duopolistic form. (With membership reduced to Oregon State and Washington State, the Pac-12 continues as a two-member revenant, at least for now.) In the meantime, the networks that carry the crowded conferences can expect to convert a whole lot of extra viewers into even greater advertising revenue during games.
While affiliation with the Big Ten and SEC has almost always been a huge competitive advantage for their network partners, the recent additions will only make the rich richer. As David Coletti, vice president of sports research and insights at iSpot.tv, noted in a recent analysis of college football ratings, the SEC and Big Ten would have accounted for 57.2% of the sport’s viewership last season if their new member schools had been included. (The SEC’s share increased 22% when the big TV numbers of Texas and Oklahoma were added after the fact, while the Big Ten’s share increased 44% when ratings from Oregon, Washington, USC and UCLA were added into the mix.)
If you remove the new additions from last year’s dataset, the SEC and Big Ten combined account for a still-impressive 43.5% of all minutes spent watching college football games. But the addition of these six programs puts the two future megaconferences in an exceptional position; iSpot estimates that the realignment probably won’t make much difference to the Big 12 and ACC, which combined accounted for 28.3% of all college football minutes in 2023.
That combined reach takes into account the various new additions and departures that will take effect this fall. In the absence of the realigned schools — the Big 12 gained Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah after losing the services of founding members Texas and Oklahoma, while the ACC added Cal, Stanford and SMU — the two conferences posted a 26.5% share.
Of course, the conferences that will almost certainly survive will next The wave of realignment is thriving at the expense of the smaller fish. As Coletti presented, the Big Ten’s huge market share gain was made possible by the acquisition of the four Pac-12 defectors, while the SEC’s increased shipments were made possible by the Big 12’s two new additions.
At this point, recruiting former Pac-12 teams appears to provide the greatest immediate benefit to the bolstered legacy conferences, as the much-shrinked association was the third most-watched in 2023, accounting for 17.2% of all viewers. With the loss of 10 member schools, 88% of the television time spent watching the Pac-12 in 2023 has been effectively wiped off the books; all other things being equal, the zombified conference is expected to drop as low as eighth on the consumption charts this year, trailing even the Mountain West and American Athletic.
Fox, CBS and Disney’s ABC/ESPN are poised to take full advantage of the conference chaos. Thanks to its Big Ten contract, Fox once again drew the most college football viewers in its noon Eastern time slot, with the annual Ohio State-Michigan hatefest drawing the most viewers at 19.1 million. Penn State-Ohio State (9.96 million viewers) and Michigan-Penn State (9.16 million) also put up numbers for Fox last season; meanwhile, Pac-12 dropout Colorado appeared in Fox’s next three biggest telecasts, including a Sept. 9 visit from Nebraska that drew 8.73 million curious viewers.
While Deion Sanders’ 4-8 first season may have calmed the conversation around his Buffaloes somewhat, they’ll still be on everyone’s lips this fall. NBC will have its first chance at Coach Prime & Co. on September 7, when Colorado faces the Cornhuskers again, while the other dates on CBS, ABC and ESPN are already set. Colorado is in five of the 20 most-watched games of 2023 and could be the most influential school to pass through the transfer portal, although Oregon is also likely to make a splash in its new quarters. The Ducks, who outclassed Sanders’ team in the second-biggest game of last season’s regular season (despite a 42-6 loss, ABC reached over 10 million viewers) and are ranked No. 3 in the AP preseason polls, have three big games coming up on Fox, including a revival of their 130-year-old rivalry with the Beavers of Corvallis on Sept. 14 and two subsequent Friday night matchups with their new Big Ten playmates Michigan State and Purdue.
The Big Ten’s footprint now stretches from sea to sea, assuming you’re not too picky about the geographic location of the Rutgers/Maryland campuses — but it also automatically makes a historic football stronghold even more powerful. Including bowl games, the Ducks, Bruins, Huskies and Trojans add a combined 2,792 wins to the Big Ten’s already impressive record (7,342), and while it’s been a while since UCLA and USC last struck fear into their opponents, the addition of the second-largest media market is a big win for the conference. (LA fans may be unreliable, but the addition of those two programs alone brings 5.91 million new television households, or nearly 5% of the national base, into the Big Ten family.)
Meanwhile, ESPN got a preview of what the new-look SEC could do for its TV broadcasts last season, as Texas’ 34-24 win over Alabama on Sept. 9 drew 8.76 million viewers. The Longhorns are ranked fourth in recent preseason polls, and their annual Red River Rivalry game against Oklahoma drew another 7.87 million viewers in 2023.
Reflecting Texas’s wide reach, the Longhorns are among the most expensive teams in college football, with the average cost of a 30-second in-game spot during their national broadcasts exceeding $70,000 per spot. When the Horns face teams like Michigan, as Fox will do in its prime midday slot on Sept. 7, scatter units are making more than $125,000 per pitch. These staggering ratings aren’t simply a result of realignment fever; the two programs haven’t faced each other since Texas beat Michigan 38-37 in the 2005 Rose Bowl.
