Just to make it reaaaally simple, the Alamo bowl got 5.5 million viewers. How much do you think the network get per set of eyeballs? $5? $10? $50? Check out that math and realize this is just one vein of money flow. And this is coming from a bowl they DON'T own but then lets look at the potential of owning a bowl.
First and foremost, the butts in seats. No matter how many, that's normally gravy. The venue's are HEAVY sponsors. Valero paid a few bucks to be the title sponsor. Lets not forget the smaller sponsors. I was going to put the list of other sponsors on here but there are so many, it went past the allotted numbers of characters I could use in a post. Go here. https://www.alamobowl.com/get-involved/current-sponsors/
Some are financial, most of them probably aren't but that just means less overhead, more monies to keep in the coffers.
Lets not forget about the towns and Chamber of Commerce. Remember these are sold as community events because of the massive influx of travelers coming into town... And all of this is just the beginning. This is all the bigger stuff but I'm certain I'm missing one of the biggies. Anyways, I guess it depends on your definition of "exceptional but hundreds of millions of dollars flowing around ONE bowl game is... exceptional to me.
Ok, slow down. What does the Alamo Bowl have to do with your previous post, which was about the ESPN-owned bowls - all of which are of the Mickey Mouse variety? There will not be hundreds of millions flowing around the Myrtle Beach Bowl, in the 20,000 capacity venue of Coastal Carolina. Nor will there be 5.5 million eyeballs watching it on TV. The ESPN-owned Camelia Bowl had attendance of 17,000, and paid the teams $250,000. It was in Montgomery , Alabama, with Georgia Southern as one participant. I don't think there was a massive influx of travelers for that one.
Obviously ESPN profits from all these mickey mouse bowls, otherwise why would they have all of them (and more)? Not sure if anyone else does.......