We have a LONG way to go in college football before getting to the 2020 bowl games. It is uncertain if the season will even start, and it would be a significant feat at this point if we can merely play five games in the middle of autumn and provide some television revenue for schools, without anyone getting severely ill from COVID-19.
It has to be acknowledged that when the weather gets cold and we approach flu season in a pandemic, without a vaccine being available, sports could grind to a halt. Bowl games, occupying the second half of the month of December and the first few days of January, are far more endangered than early-season games. Moreover, if there are any COVID-19 postponements of regular season games, this means the various conference championship games would be pushed back later in December. This means bowl games might not even begin in December. They would be scheduled in January. That will further jeopardize their existence within the framework of this specific college football season.
It is worth asking: How big an economic hit will be created by the inability to play bowl games?
Eben Novy-Williams and Anthony Crupi of Sportico addressed that question in this wide-ranging piece of research on advertising revenue ESPN and other TV outlets rake in on college football.
Here is the money stat (pun intended) on bowl games, and how central they are to ESPN’s bottom line as a college football broadcaster, and to Disney, ESPN’s parent company:
Disney generated $792.6 million in advertising sales from college football last season, based on what ABC and the ESPN family of networks (ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU — SEC Network was not included) were able to sell.
Of this $792.6M total, $343.6M was generated by the bowls and the national championship game.
That might seem unremarkable on the surface, but let’s phrase this reality in a different way: Whereas 14 weeks of regular-season games — Saturdays, yes, but also weeknights — generated $449M in ad revenue, the 36 bowl games owned or televised by Disney (ESPN/ESPN2/ABC) generated $343.6M. That’s nearly $10M of advertising revenue per game for the postseason slate.
How many regular-season games would ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPNU televise on a normal college football Saturday? Conservatively, at least 11. On a busier day, possibly 13. Over the course of a season, that’s at least 154 games. Add weeknights plus Week Zero (late-August early games), and the total easily exceeds 200.
It is conspicuous that 36 postseason games carry that much weight measured against multiple hundreds of regular-season games.
ESPN has a vested interest in playing the season, but that vested interest is paramount when considering the bowl games. There is more to be said on this subject… and we will say it soon enough.