It’s all because of where the money comes from – the fickle TV folks.
According to the College Athletics Database, 28.3 percent of college athletics revenues comes from media rights, by far the single-biggest line item on the revenue side, nearly doubling ticket sales, which account for 16.5 percent of the bottom line.
The thinking in the athletics director’s office on this, the people buying tickets will come whenever we schedule the game, that money is a given, and it’s fixed, the way to make more is, to play ball with the TV people.
It’s not quite to the point where you’re paying for single-game and season tickets so that you can be part of the background for the TV cameras, though, OK, maybe we are there now.
But it’s clear that if they’re going to bend over backwards, it’s not going to be for the people who buy tickets.
Which is why we get noon tips on a Saturday and 9 p.m tips on a Tuesday.
Tonight’s home game with NC State is the fourth and final 9 p.m. tip for Virginia ticket holders this season.
From a convenience standpoint, a weeknight 9 p.m. tip is anything but.
It’s hard enough to stay up and watch on TV for people who have to go to work the next morning; for those who have tickets, getting home past midnight, well past midnight, if you don’t live close by, you’re either operating the next day on no sleep, or taking a personal or vacation day.
All so, in the case of tonight’s game, the ACC Network, which you can tell doesn’t draw a meaningfully measurable group of TV viewers, based on the low-dollar TV commercial inventory on the broadcasts, can have a 9 p.m. start time.
If it makes you feel better, and it won’t, there are three ACC games tomorrow night; all three are 7 p.m. tips, including the Boston College-Virginia Tech game on the ACC Network, which at 9 p.m. reverts back to its regular schedule of filler programming that nobody watches.
This ACC Network was supposed to be what helped the ACC and its member schools get back toward an equal footing financially with the big boys in the SEC and Big Ten.
Not only is that not even close to being a reality, but the accommodations being made for the ACC Network are literally keeping us up late at night and making us miss work the next day.
What I’m still trying to figure out is how ESPN and the ACC make the math on the handful of viewers they’re getting from ACCN add up to anything.
Something for us all to muse on as we saunter to JPJ for late-night ACC hoops tonight.
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Chris Graham
