On your 2nd point, meant to say 10-15 million more per year, realize that is a stretch, pac 12 is 20-25 million per year, and isn’t close to the other conferences, we need to get to the upper 30’s, which is isn’t even half of what the big 10 and sec get.
The rankings I posted were simply the size of the media markets. Needless to say WSU and most of the Big 12 don’t show up, however there are a lot of viewers for WSU and others, I assume the TV people and our commissioner had some numbers. Pitching the pac 12 as a strong market is critical, also the Pac 12 needs to find a way to win some of these key non conference games this year. Beating Florida, Georgia, and Wisconsin, would help ratings.
Acouple weeks ago I found a listing of average viewership, sorted by team. I think that would be a better reference than the media market sizes. Of the top 10 highest viewership teams, only 2 (Georgia and Notre Dame) are actually in top 10 markets (although a couple other teams, like Michigan and tOSU, aren't far from them). tOSU & Michigan are #1 & #2. Georgia #5, Notre Dame #9. Alabama was #3. UW is in the #12 market, but was #38 in viewers, Oregon is near-ish the #21 market, but was #10 in viewers.
This is obviously influenced by the number of times these teams played on a national broadcast. Most of the top 10 plays on ABC, CBS, NBC, or ESPN every week so they've constantly got a national audience. You'd have to look at a few years worth of viewership to start to balance that (it'll never balance for those national teams, but it should for the lower tiers).
What the 2021 numbers show is that many of the teams that have been discussed just don't have a piece of the market that a network will pay for. Of the teams that have been mentioned the most, Houston is the leader in viewership - in the country's #8 TV market, they averaged 232,000 viewers, which puts them 10K ahead of Cal - the last place Pac-12 team. If they joined the Pac-12 and doubled their viewers, they'd be #9, behind WSU.
San Diego State is in the #27 TV market. They went 12-2 and were ranked in the top 25, and managed to be #78 in viewership with 198K per week. They'd be dead last in the Pac-12. If they doubled, they'd still be #9 in the conference. For a little extra salt in that wound, in a county with 3 million people, in a stadium that seats 27K, their largest attendance of the year was 13,445. They're not a draw.
Fresno State is between a couple of big markets, but manages to be #104, with only 45K viewers per week. With butts in the seats, they're actually better than WSU. Their
lowest attendance was 26K, and they had 4 games last season where attendance exceeded our capacity. Looks like their fans actually
go to the games, they don't watch on TV.
Utah State is even worse. At the edge of the #30 market, they land at #93 in viewers - 91K per week. They could triple viewership and still only be #11 in the Pac-12. They went 11-3, ranked 24th, and drew only 25,240 for a rivalry game against BYU. That was their high mark for home attendance.
Nevada is in a smaller market - although not far from the Sacramento-Modesto one - is #96, only pulls 78K viewers. In the stadium, they were just short of 29K to play UNLV, but the rest of the season didn't break 24K.
Colorado St is #99 at 59K per week. Their home attendance compared to ours in the first half, but by their last game they were down to 17.5K.
San Jose State is #100, also at 59K. In the #6 media market, with around 7.5 million in the vicinity, they lured 17,000 people to their stadium once.
UNLV is #107, 34K per game. They had 35,000 people show up to watch them lose to Iowa State, but 10,000 were probably from Iowa. They didn't hit 22K for another game, and were under 17K by the end.
New Mexico is #109, 25K per game. Their home attendance broke 15K only twice, and was barely 11K for the last game.
Point is, every single one of these teams is in a much larger market than WSU, but can't even match us in home attendance. Forget about TV, none of them are even close. Yes, being elevated to Pac-12 would probably mean more viewers, but the best of them could quadruple their current viewership and still only be middle of the pack. The last 4 could increase their viewership 8x and they'd still be behind WSU. They just don't bring enough to the table.
SDSU, with the added benefit of maintaining a SoCal presence,
might be worth a look - but only if they'll take a half share. Fresno might also give some access to recruiting grounds. None of the rest provide that benefit.
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