When Notre Dame's TV contract with NBC ends after the the 2025 season (four seasons from now), they are going to have TV Networks and streaming services throwing ridiculous sums of money at them as, with conference consolidation, there are now more viewing platforms than there are available purveyors of power football. Notre Dame will be able to negotiate an annual football only payment that is far more than even the Big 10 can offer. There are now more broadcast options (with money) than ever before. Amazon is now paying the NFL $1 billion a year to televise just Thursday night games. Not a stretch to think that ND will get offers of 10%+ of that for ND's home football games and related football content. Such a move would also allow ND to keep its independent status in football (and control its schedule), while also receiving the benefit of playing in the ACC conference for all of its other sports.
Just don't see ND giving up all of that money and control so that it can be treated the same as Purdue and Indiana. ND will stay independent.
If ND stays independent, how valuable is their brand when they can't play for a national championsip? By 2025, I think the 2 mega conferences will be settled, and will be playing for a defacto national championship. Will people still want to watch notre dame football? Probably, but not quite at the level they might expect.
to show how stupid the ND TV money will look (and I am not disagreeing with Pilchard...but this is funny money), here is their 2022 home schedule:
Marshall
Cal
BYU
Stanford
UNLV
Clemson
Boston College
Their 2023 schedule:
Navy (in Dublin)
Tennessee State
Central Michigan
Ohio State
Southern Cal
Wake Forest
Pittsburgh
Have you looked at some the NFL matchups on Thursday night this year?
Panthers v. Falcons
Commanders v. Bears
Eagles v. Texans
Jags v. Jets
Realize that the NFL is far bigger than ND football, but there are people all over the country that live and die for ND football. It's not a regional following; it's national. ND will be over-paid for the rights to televise their games. We shall see what the ultimate offer is, but think there is a strong chance that money offered to ND will be enough for the Irish to stay independent (keep in mind that ND still receives $$$ from the ACC in addition to its football contract.
Each of those god awful NFL games will dwarf all of NDs games this year in ratings except maybe Ohio State where it may be close and that's because Ohio State.
https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Daily/Issues/2021/11/30/Media/Notre-Dame-TV.aspx
"No Irish game this season drew more than 4 million viewers. NBC’s best game this season was 3.8 million for the Irish’s lone loss against Cincinnati. Also hurting Notre Dame viewership this season: a sharp drop for its USC game, which averaged just 2.9 million viewers on primetime Oct. 23."
That's still a lot of viewers and worthy of a big contract but comparing it to the NFL is silly. The worst NFL games still get 10 million viewers.
Only saying that, four years from now (taking into account the present value of money and that TV rights fees contracts only increase), ND may be able to negotiate a contract that is 10% of the annual value of the NFL Thursday night contract, and 25% of the value of per game value of the NFL contract. Using math from your example, a "bad" NFL game gets 10 million viewers, ND football averages 2.9 million viewers; so, ND getting 25% of what the NFL gets for bad football games in rights fees does seem that insane.
in the face of exploding revenues, it's really perplexing that Swofford and the ACC negotiators saw fit to sign a 20-ish year contract
https://www.wsj.com/articles/nfl-ra...otching-best-results-in-six-years-11642018351
"Thursday night games, which were carried by Fox and the NFL Network and are streamed on Amazon Prime, AMZN -2.26%▼ averaged 16.4 million viewers this season, a gain of 16%. Next season, Amazon.com Inc. will become the exclusive media outlet for most Thursday games."
Amazon will be paying $1B per year for a 15 game TNF package that averaged 16.4M viewers last year. ND averaged 2.5M over 7 games last year. If ND gets a deal that pays an equivalent per viewer then that would put them in the $60-70M range per year. Amazon is also out there spending F you money because they can and NBC isn't. I think they can get reasonably close to the B1G and SEC when you add in their ACC distribution from non-football stuff plus postseason payouts but I'd be shocked if they got all the way to $100M total.
Only saying that, four years from now (taking into account the present value of money and that TV rights fees contracts only increase), ND may be able to negotiate a contract that is 10% of the annual value of the NFL Thursday night contract, and 25% of the value of per game value of the NFL contract. Using math from your example, a "bad" NFL game gets 10 million viewers, ND football averages 2.9 million viewers; so, ND getting 25% of what the NFL gets for bad football games in rights fees does seem that insane.
I think the SEC allows ND into the playoff party to prevent ND from being forced to join the B1G