Can UConn Save the SNY Deal?

By
Tyler
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AAC Commissioner Mike Aresco with UConn Athletics Director David Benedict (AP)

In the hours after the American Athletic Conference and ESPN announced a new media contract that will pay the member schools $1 billion over 12 years, but lock a significant amount of AAC contests behind the paywall of the ESPN+ streaming service, UConn took the dramatic action of publicly criticizing the deal.  

The source of the university’s displeasure does not appear to be the paltry bump in TV revenue, but rather the tenuous fate of UConn’s partnership with SNY. Now, with the contract in hand, the university is trying to salvage that relationship, but silence and tactical errors over the last months if not years, might have made that impossible.

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It is heartening to see UConn taking a stand on behalf of its fanbase. It feels like the first positive sign out of the UConn athletic department since Dan Hurley was hired 12 months ago. And it is financially imperative. According to Sports Business Journal ($), SNY reaches a huge cross section of viewers in the tristate area and generates over $10 million annually from its partnership with UConn. SNY gives UConn a seven-figure payout on top of the existing conference media deal and tremendous regional reach for its standout women’s basketball program — plus some football and men’s basketball games and the benefits of SNY’s non-game UConn content, which has earned effusive praise.  

Losing that would hurt, and that UConn raised the issue so loudly and so quickly speaks to how big the hurt would be. But by waiting until the deal was announced to force the conversation in the public sphere, UConn has missed a big opportunity to put pressure on the negotiators and — possibly — secure a better deal for itself.

While the AAC has no doubt generated a return on ESPN’s initial investment, this contract is primarily a content grab. ESPN+, unburdened from the confines of a finite number of cable channels, needs as much content as possible to lure subscribers. With only two million current subscriptions, ESPN+ needs to start poaching viewers from regional sports channels to grow its customer base. Peeling away a sizable chunk of SNY’s Connecticut customers (plus the large contingent of Husky fans in New York City) who will pay $5 per month to watch their beloved UConn sports would seem in keeping with that plan. The same factors that make UConn sports so profitable for SNY are true for ESPN, only the latter has an added need for unlimited content and the market strength to exert concessions from small athletic conferences and their members.

It is noble that UConn is mounting a defense of its relationship with SNY, but the university does not have much leverage over ESPN or the AAC unless it’s going to start getting serious about exploring other conference options, something the school has been extremely reluctant to talk about publicly.

The AAC and ESPN have UConn over a barrel and everyone knows it. The university has been losing money year over year to cling to its championship basketball legacy and keep its struggling football program operational. All in hopes of — finally — landing an invite to the gilded lands of the Power 5. UConn’s desperation is not exactly a secret, and as long as it is committed to staying on the current path, there is no reason for a third party to jump in to help out.

We don’t know how UConn voted on the new TV deal, or how forceful they were if they demanded that a carve out be made for SNY (it should be noted that Navy received preferred treatment to broadcast its football games through CBS), however given the speed and volume of their post-announcement outrage, it seems safe to assume the university made its unhappiness known to the league, its members and ESPN, all of which agreed to the contract anyway.

As Matt Brown of SB Nation points out, UConn’s motivations for being in the AAC — and its needs from the new TV contract — are fundamentally different from the other league members, none of whom have much reason to fear UConn leaving for a different league that can offer more favorable visibility for women’s basketball. The one common ambition of UConn and the premiere football schools in the AAC is admission to a better league. SNY expands UConn’s reach into the biggest media market in the world, enhances the value of the school’s biggest assets and gives the Huskies an enviable way to show off what is left of the heavyweight status its basketball programs have earned with decades of championships. None of that helps Houston, Cincinnati or UCF earn a Big 12 invite. So it’s no surprise that they were unwilling to help out UConn during contract negotiations.

With the window now closed on working an exemption for SNY into the league contract, hopes for a resolution rest on direct negotiations between SNY and ESPN, which are allegedly imminent. As mentioned above, pushing SNY out of the picture seems like a good move for ESPN. The network would drive up its subscription count and acquire exclusive access to a true marquee product in UConn women’s basketball that it is currently missing.

There are two ways an arrangement might make sense. One, if ESPN feels like being charitable to UConn. Sure, it’s literally never happened before, but, maybe? The second thing that may make a partnership work is the same thing that makes every part of college sports work: money.

If ESPN can squeeze a few million dollars a year out of SNY to subsidize the costs of producing content, would that be enough? Would a $2 million payment from SNY (the annual equivalent of about 33,000 ESPN+ subscriptions) convince ESPN to forfeit its newfound ownership of the premiere women’s sports product in the country? Or is the value of building a robust and exclusive base of sports content worth more for ESPN’s long-term vision for its streaming service than an immediate cash infusion. Considering ESPN+ is the network’s bold-ish, forward-looking strategy to brace for the next generation of streaming sports broadcasting, it does not look great for SNY.

All of which raises the question, could this have been avoided? Is there anything UConn could have done in the run up to the new AAC media deal to earn more leverage or lay the groundwork for a continuation of its exclusive deal with SNY? We will never know — and hindsight is 20/20 — but it certainly seems like UConn should have worked a little harder to let ESPN and its conference mates know that the other options on the table were viable.

Over the past few years, the groundwork has already been laid. UConn’s unsuccessful pitch to get into the Big 12 curiously included an offer to send the conference only the Huskies’ football program while placing the remainder of UConn sports back in the Big East. In December, Big East commissioner Val Ackerman cracked open the window of Big East expansion even further. So as UConn suffered near ceaseless humiliation from its football program — which had the worst defense in the nation, lost both coordinators and tens of millions of dollars playing in a state-owned stadium that is amazingly bilking money from the state university — there was arguably a moment for UConn to start carefully placing stories in the local and national media, explaining to the fans, and the other AAC schools, what a future outside of the AAC might look like for UConn. Instead, there was prolonged silence with the occasional interjection of tepid support for the AAC.

In part because of that silence, there is no reason for fans, AAC schools or ESPN to think UConn has any intention of exploring options outside of the league. That is likely where UConn was going to land regardless. No one in Storrs wants to be the one who finally killed UConn football. Understandable. But by not playing the game, loudly and in public, they may have accidentally killed their access to SNY and done incalculable damage to the entire athletic department moving forward.

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