Having spent an inordinate amount of time collecting TV data over the past decade, I find that TV designation day, the day when the Big East and its teams releases the tip times and TV homes for all games, is more exciting than schedule release day. We already know all 10 opponents and have a general idea of the timeframes. Plus for those of us not in the area, there’s not much that’s actionable.
But with the TV designations, we can not only plan our in-house “Do Not Disturb” timeline, it can give us a great sense of who the league and its TV affiliates thinks is going to be good this upcoming season.
Here’s what I said around this time last year.
I got a lot of pushback saying, “why do you care” or “back in my day we could only listen on the radio so be grateful,” basically saying I was overanalyzing it. But sure enough, when the coaches’ poll came out, Marquette was tabbed 9th and Kolek and Co. took it very personally.
Because as much as those TV designations don’t matter to the hardcore fan, they make the world of difference to an average college basketball fan.
TV Map
Wednesday morning I saw a Tweet from a UConn account that piqued my interest.
I decided to apply this view to the Big East, so went through each team’s schedule page and pulled out what networks the games were listed on, with a column for TBD for those without a listing (or for cases like Marquette’s at the Maui Invitational, where the channel will depend on the results). Here’s those results:
I loved being able to see it this way, to easily compare Marquette’s designations compared to its Big East peers. Like the fact that MU has the most games on FOX this season is cool on its own, but further validation that expectations are incredibly high. In fact, Marquette as many games on FOX this season (7) than the past 3 seasons combined.
And to go back to my initial complaint from 2022, only 3 games on CBS Sports Network (and none on FS2). This is probably better than I could have hoped for in regards to the reigning Big East champ. Add in the fact that Maui will be on ESPN/2 and that it’s a historically loaded field, you can expect some crazy high ratings numbers for MU this season.
All channels are not created equal
If you’ve ever wondered what the Big East TV ratings looks like, wonder no more, as I built you an interactive dashboard where you can see any game that landed in the top-150 of that particular day last season.
And what putting that together has shown me is that the biggest driver of TV audience is the channel it’s on, not just the team. Obviously there are a ton of factors, but if you look at just regular season conference games, the Big East averaged 207K viewers per game in 37 contests last season, with a high of 345K for Creighton at St. John’s on Feb 18th.
The same teams averaged 785K viewers in 18 games on FOX last season. (Yes, the Creighton v DePaul Christmas numbers got an artificial lift, but even removing them gets you an average of 655,677.)
It doesn’t take a dashboard to tell you over-the-air broadcast networks >> paid cable channels, but this is one of the reasons the Big East’s partnership with FOX has been so positive for the conference. Not only do almost all games have a widely accessible linear channel to view them on, but a significant chunk get to live on prime real estate with big FOX.
And because I like to put things in buckets, here’s how I view the current TV landscape in terms of which channels provide the most access and potential viewership.
Tier 1
FOX: National broadcast network available over-the-air with significant lifts from NFL/Big Ten programming.
CBS: National broadcast network available over-the-air and home of the NCAA Tournament.
ESPN: Still the worldwide leader in sports with reach into over 72 million homes as of June 2023.
Tier 2
ESPN2: Available in over 72 million homes, and generally in the base tier of cable packages, smaller ratings than ESPN.
FS1: Available in over 72 million homes, and generally in the base tier of cable packages, smaller ratings than ESPN.
CW: National broadcast network available over the air, but very little sports programming historically.
Tier 3
ESPNU: Available in 37 million homes, with lower viewership numbers.
FS2: Available in 52 million homes, but with miniscule viewer numbers.
CBSSN: Not opted into Nielsen ratings, so reach and viewership is unknown, though generally lowly regarded.
SECNet: Regional ESPN affiliate not usually available in base cable packages
Using these tiers we can then bucket the above map to get a better sense of how the TV partners see the Big East shaking out.
UConn leads the way with 9 Tier 1 slots, which could be matched by Marquette if it beats UCLA to open the Maui Invite. But in general, UConn/MU/Creighton are in the top tier, with St. John’s fighting Pitinos and Villanova right behind. From there Georgetown gets love because it somehow still pulls in the old people when it’s on FOX and X and PC round it out at 3 apiece.
Butler, DePaul and Seton Hall combining for 2 makes sense from both an audience and athletic standpoint, but still speaks volumes compared to the mega numbers given to MU and UConn.
But to me, the reason this TV schedule has the potential to break MU records, is that there are so few Tier 3s, just the 3 CBSSN conference games. With so much hype and expectation, MU will be playing to a full national audience almost every game this season. Even peers like UConn and Creighton had a good chunk of their respective schedules in Tier 3, unlike MU.
Conclusion
The Big East’s TV contract with FS1 and FOX has aged impeccably well. Not only is it one of the only conferences where a large majority of its games can be found on linear TV with only a base cable subscription, it has also significantly expanded its reach into the over-the-air network.
Who knows what the future will hold when the contract expires in 2025, but for now, Big East fans of all teams should be grateful for the feast at hand.
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