If a business wants to limit access in order to increase revenue that is their choice. When a university wants to limit access to their sports teams to increase revenue that is their choice. But what really happens with all the millions of increased revenue schools get from football and basketball? Essentially it goes to pay coaches and staff more money. And they can spend more on fancy weight rooms and the like. That is it.
The schools don't use the millions to lower the ever increasing costs students must pay. They don't tell donors to stop giving money because they have gotten so much by selling rights to athletics. They don't lower the price of tickets to the games - in fact they mainly have raised them.
So the tradeoff for schools in deciding to remove March Madness games (including in the NCAA final four) and bowl games from broadcast television to massively overpriced cable TV is the tradeoff between fans and paying coaches and administrators even more than the extremely large salaries they get now (many university football programs have many assistant coaches paid more than any professors at the school).
Blocking alumni and fans from watching on broadcast TV by limiting those who can watch to those paying massively inflated cable TV bill makes perfect sense for a business trying to maximize the income they can take from fans. I have enjoyed college basketball and put up with the greedy behavior by the administrators and coaches of these programs but I think it is time to give up and focus on other sources of recreation.
I have given up on others who seek to maximize their income to such an extent it destroys the experience. I think the level of greed from the coaches and staff that have gotten the schools to put huge payments to those people above alumni and fans has risen to such a level as to make even college basketball (which I really liked) not worth the time. It is a sad state of affairs.
CBS and Turner announced Tuesday that the 2014 and 2015 national semifinals would be aired on TBS rather than CBS.Related: Penn State Scandal is Horrendous and Points to the Very Deep Corruption of Our Leaders - Many schools continue on the ego driven spiraling costs - Harvard Steps Up Defense Against Abusive Journal Publishers
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Cable subscription fees, which over-the-air networks don’t collect, are a driving factor in who can afford these rights and why prices for them keep climbing. As long as all cable viewers, regardless of interest in sports, continue to subsidize sports watchers, this is how things are going to work.
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