Streaming Needs College Football, But Does College Football Need Streaming?

College football is some of the most-watched (and most valuable to advertisers) programming on TV.

We know this, of course. That fact has fueled college sports consolidation to the point where ESPN and Fox have basically staked out separate corners of the map, and destroyed the Pac-12 in the process.

But these networks aren’t just linear outposts anymore. All of them also own streaming services. Streaming services that have been hemorrhaging billions of dollars in recent years. So with media companies desperate to stop the bleeding, they’re going to a tried-and-true playbook: Exclusivity around specific games.

Networks have been doing this for quite some time to put pressure on carriers to pick up new cable channels. ESPN infamously did it with a North Carolina vs. Duke men’s basketball game in 1994 to increase carriage for the fledgling (at the time) offshoot network, ESPN2. That worked because customers were unhappy they wouldn’t have the game and took it out on the carrier.

Now? The math is a little different.

Take NBC’s announcement this week around 10 Peacock-exclusive college football games this year, including one {previously announced) Notre Dame contest and nine Big Ten matchups. In the past, optioning games to a new network directed ire at the carrier. But in the streaming era, consumers have a direct relationship with these media companies via subscriptions. So the discontent is now aimed at the media company when it tells audiences that they’ll need to pay at least $5.99 per month during the season to watch every Big Ten game.

It’s a dangerous game, especially as streaming prices seem to be rising across the board, as a necessity to keep the current one foot in/one foot out approach to streaming in place. If they’d just take the plunge, there would be short-term pain for long-term gain. Instead, they’re risking the short- and long-term out of fear for how many viewers they’d lose moving away from linear TV.

They may lose them anyway, though. Last year, the median linear TV viewer was 55 years old. Those audiences are only going to get older, and also have decreasing value to advertisers over time as a consumer segment. If there was a singular push toward streaming, perhaps it could work. But that’s not what’s happening. Instead, streaming is simply segmenting viewership even further, especially when it comes to sports.

We’ve discussed how sports are cutting TV to pieces in this space before, and that was focused on the professional level. When you look at college sports, it’s even worse. For instance, here’s the breakdown of what you’ll need to watch all of the FBS-level college football action in week 1 this year.

(conferences indicated are for home teams only — and notably most teams are playing non-conference games in week 1)

At least a few of those aren’t part of basic MVPD packages, some (like ESPN+ and Peacock) aren’t on linear packages at all, and the Pac-12 Network always struggled to get carriage, even in its own West Coast footprint. And this is just for week one, too. Fresno State (Mountain West) will have a game exclusively on UniMas in September. Army and UMass (both independents) air home games on CBS Sports, and the SEC will still have some games on CBS this season starting in week 3. There’s probably more partners we haven’t even gotten to yet.

It just appears that if networks are using college football games as a carrot for streaming service subscriptions, they do seem set up for failure there. Younger audiences are tuning out of sports in droves as it is, and college football fandom is a key aspect of that move away from the fervent sports viewership previous generations had.

The sport’s move away from regional conferences is problematic on its own. It gets worse when adding cord-cutting/cord-never elements, streaming exclusive gates to watch games, and a growing disenchantment with higher education in the wake of the pandemic.

You might even be able to argue that streaming (and specifically, streaming exclusivity) is something college football would be wise to avoid at all costs. The Pac-12 was wary of it (via the offer it had from Apple TV+) before the league collapsed, and that is a central reason why no major college conference has signed an exclusive rights deal with Apple, Amazon, Netflix or other streamers. It’s simply not conducive to the business college sports need to be in: Growing a fan base.

Unfortunately, though, the dynamics affecting TV may mean it’s too late for the sport to say no to this partner (streaming) it doesn’t need.