re: Will the SEC Network have the same success as the BTN? 

quote:

---

ESPN has not released the profit share. The carriage contracts are also not part of the public record nor are the costs. It's a rough estimate.

Honestly the widely rumored 50/50 split makes little sense. I'd go into detailed reasons but the gist of it is that the question for the SEC was have a partner or not. Having a partner means (theoretically) a bigger pie but a smaller piece of it.

For ESPN the option was $0 or X%. Given missing on this meant $0 in profit and long term potentially losing the SEC altogether, even a 10% profit for ESPN is a win for them. No idea what the actual split is, but it's obvious the leverage is greatly in the SEC's favor and something as skewed as 80/20 to the SEC wouldn't really be unreasonable. It might also explain why everyone is so hesitant to release it.

---

The flipside is the SEC could have had 100% of much smaller profits and fought carriage battles for many years and probably taken a number of years to become profitable. If it's not a partnership with ESPN, none of these premiere(aTm/SC or Au/Arky) games get to be on the SECNetwork. It's strictly leftover games. You probably never break into the CBS exclusivity window either. You also don't get to package yourself with ESPN when the Disney contracts all expire Sept 31 this year giving you insane leverage to basically reach 100% market penetration prior to game 1. Plus you've got to invest $100s of millions on the front end in preparations vs piggybacking onto ESPNU's infrastructure.

50/50 was the best model. Maybe in 10 years you could argue otherwise, but that's a lifetime away. In 10 years, I fully expect us to be raiding another conference for 2 more teams(as the GORs expire), having new look ins, and will have our tier 1 rights back on the market -- which is going to bring a totally stupid number next time, as hindsight shows we're currently getting raped by CBS.