Moccia’s objective: Blackouts for Aggies
TV money doesn’t offset poor football ticket sales
College football is sloshing around in television money. You can see it in inflated coaching salaries and practice facilities that feature spas, juice bars, and movie theaters. Clemson’s football players are getting a mini-golf course and an indoor slide.
Then in Las Cruces, Mario Moccia is trying to rebalance the scales. For the next couple of years, the New Mexico State athletic director plans to do all he can to keep the Aggies off TV.
Think of it like an NFL broadcast blackout.
“I’m choosing not to do damage to myself,” Moccia said. He suspects more people will come to the games if they can’t watch from home and the school will make up any lost revenue at the gate. Only 5 percent of the Aggies’ $29 million annual athletic budget comes from TV, and Moccia figures it’s worth experimenting.
It’s hard to overstate how unusual Moccia is. The pursuit of TV money has led programs and conferences to make all kinds of concessions, and while that might make shortterm sense — media money is guaranteed, ticket sales are not — it threatens to irritate and alienate the fan base over the long term.
In the Pac-12 Conference, for example, broadcasters adjust the kickoff times for schools six to 12 days in advance, often to the frustration of ticket-holders. The Mid-American Conference, a league of schools on par with NMSU, agreed in its deal with ESPN to play football on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, conscious that the games would draw smaller crowds.
As part of the Mountain West Conference football TV deal, New Mexico kicked off its last two regular season home games at 8:15 p.m. Because they aired on ESPN2, UNM received $500,000 per game. And yet, the Lobos averaged a bare 18,708 fans a home game in 2016 — down from 22,562 a season earlier, and well off the record average of 38,341 in 2005.
The money is persuasive. Eager to hold on to one of the last reliable TV audiences, networks have paid ever-
increasing sums for live sports of all kinds. The Big Ten Conference, for example, is about to start a new, six-year TV contract worth $440 million a year, nearly three times what the group was able to negotiate in 2006. Its 14 schools will also share revenue from the Big Ten Network and other smaller media deals. The annual payout to schools such as Michigan and Ohio State, about $32.4 million last year, will increase significantly.
The postseason pot got bigger for everyone in 2014, when ESPN agreed to pay $7.3 billion over 12 years for the rights to the newly established College Football Playoff. Each of the power conferences — Big Ten, Southeastern Conference, Big 12, Pac-12 and the Atlantic Coast Conference — now get $55 million, double their payout from the previous Bowl Championship Series. The average payout for the other conferences went from $3.3 million each to $16.7 million. The independent schools also saw a bump.
When it comes to regularseason media deals, though, smaller conferences may have seen revenue peak. Around the same time the Big Ten was negotiating with Fox and ESPN, Conference USA — now home to UTEP, Marshall and Southern Miss — was shopping its rights. The league earned nearly $10 million from TV in 2015-16; this year, it will receive $2.8 million from four networks, according to the Virginian-Pilot.
In that environment, Moccia decided NMSU, which plays one more year in the Sun Belt before it is kicked out and goes independent, would experiment.
Moccia cut the number of Aggies home football games on local TV from five to three. Attendance didn’t spike (averaging 9,545 over five home games), but a cold snap on the way to a 3-9 record may have discouraged fans. He plans to broadcast six of 17 men’s home basketball games this season, down from 14 last year.
In any event, Moccia says he’ll need to evaluate trends over a few years. He recently met with 100 NMSU alums in Phoenix who’ve followed the team on Fox Sports Arizona, one of the channels Moccia is trying to limit. There is also the delicate relationship with Learfield Sports, a middleman in the market for media rights, which pays the school $1 million a year.
“We have to provide them content,” Moccia said. “We can’t really say we don’t want any of our games on TV.”
While NMSU is one of the smallest programs in the toptier of college football — the Football Bowl Subdivision — no school at their level pays its coach less. Meanwhile, bigger programs and conferences may soon face their own reckoning. Most of the current slate of TV deals expire in the next seven to nine years. When renegotiations begin, how much media money will be available?
Cable companies are not thriving. At the same time, tech behemoths such as Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon are showing interest in live sports programming. Leagues have started experimenting with 3D and virtual reality rights; cell carriers like Verizon may also turn into buyers.