B1G to announce at 1pm B1G Tournament moving to DC in 2017, NYC in the future
I hate this conference more and more with every move they make.
Also: shit
Delany wouldn’t be specific, but he acknowledged that the league also will look to play its men’s basketball tournament in the New York area
“This is the next major step,” Delany said. “There will be other major steps to be announced over the next couple of months.”
The Big 10 tournament has always been about money. That's why it was created. Not to be blunt, but there's more money in DC than there is in Indianapolis. It was never about the students or their families. A single elimination tournament that can be 4 games in 4 days? Ask John Beilein what he thinks about that schedule.
....but it sucks for students.
I've only been to one BTT (two years ago in Indy) and part of what made the atmosphere great was the number of students from each of the schools.
Indy and Chicago are within a reasonable driving distance for pretty much all of the current 12 schools (maybe other than Penn St. and Nebraska).
D.C. and NYC are within a reasonable driving distance for only two or three of the soon to be 14 schools.
I didn't realize until I just looked it up, Chicago is next.
2015 will be at the UC, 2016 in Indy, 2017 in New York.
Lots of alums, but it takes more than that to sell enough tickets for an entire tournament. You're talking 5 or 6 sessions with 18 to 20 thousand tickets apiece. With 3 or 4 sessions on week days with a decent portion of games during the day.
Sure you get a decent number of Michigan, Indiana, MSU, etc. fans to show up to one-off games in NYC or DC. But it's not like they're selling out the joint. Indiana played in front of about 10K for two games in MSG this year, the second against semi-local UConn. MSU drew similar numbers for its game at MSG against Georgetown. We had a good showing at barclays two years ago but were down to about 11K for the game this year against Stanford. These fan bases are really going to do better when it's possibly three or four straight days? Are the programs that are down that year or Northwestern really going to pull in a few thousand fans?
If the Big Ten is really going this way, they'll have to pray that Maryland is really good the year it's in DC and Rutgers is .... I can't even finish that sentence.
those games you mention are either evening or weekend games. With the tourney you'll have games starting at lunchtime on Thursday and Friday.
There's boatloads of B1G alums in Dallas, LA, the Bay Area, and Seattle. Should we move the tournament out there?
To some degree, the conference tournament(s) should be somewhere within the footprint of the conference or somewhere where the actual students can get there
Man, there are 16K UM alums in FLA. It really needs to be in Miami every seventh year, once per decade at Jerryworld and... how about on an aircraft carrier at Midway Atoll? People would tune in for that!
Don't forget about Apollo 13. It really needs to be on Apollo 13. That thing was full of Michigan alumni.
As Brian quoted yesterday, NCAA has a budget of $600,000,000 for "legal and legislative expenditures." The DC lobbyists can use this tournament as another resource.
...that $600,000,000 number must be wrong. The NCAA's total revenue in 2012 was $872,000,000. http://collegebasketballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/05/02/report-the-ncaa-had-71-million-in-surplus-revenue-in-2012/ There's no way they're budgeting $600,000,000 this year for legal expenses.
I think every B1G team has a lagre enough alumni base in both New York and DC to sell out this game.
There is, however, no justification for such a move other than its monetary benefits so we've got one more piece of evidence that the conference cares about this above all else.
any more evidence, the verdict is in...
I doubt it will sell out most of the time. Indy and Chicago don't sell out all the time and they're much more centrally located.
This isn't really about making money per se, but about bringing the Big Ten to the East Coast's consciousness so that they will come to see the league as "theirs."
Anyone else think access to MSG was the main reason behind the Big East/Gavitt Tourney?
And you can charge a heck of a lot more in MSG or Barclays Center, then you can in Indy... Also more corporate sponsorships, etc. I'm sure the dollar signs made sense for Delaney.
My understanding is that the Big East has an exclusive contract with MSG through 2025. My point was that I think Delaney may have used the new agreement with the Big East as a bargaining chip to get the Big East to allow the B1G to play in MSG (especially considering the fact that ACC has locked up the Barclays Center)
I don't think the ACC "has locked up the Barclays Center". The A10 is still there 2015 and 2016, and agreed to end its contract early to give the ACC 2017 and 2018. Then the A10 is back to Barclays for three years. Point is, Barclays is not wedded to anyone, the B1G could go there at some point but it will be a few years.
If this year's Big East Tournament proved anything, it's that the Big East isn't big enough to warrant MSG as its tournament base going forward. I see the B1G trying to use its deal with the Big East to leverage MSG and get in there sooner than later. The early season deal between the conferences, to some extent is a salvation for the Big East, while it's just market penetration for the B1G.
if Michigan is playing on Saturday and Sunday that will help recruiting. They don't need to be in DC or NYC to accomplish that.
This is good news for our alums in the northeast and bad news otherwise.
Delaney is following the money. If the thought of about 45 million in revenue that keeps increasing with every new TV deal sounds good, then these new markets are a good place to start.
Not every B1G school has Michigan, OSU and PSU's deep athletic pocket.
Why not rotate the site at least? Chichago, Detroit, Indy, Cleveland, Minnesota (when the new statium is complete), NJ, DC...?
Some of you will use every opportunity to whine about Dave Brandon and Jim Delany.
Keep pretending that this impacts your decision to go to a game that you probably weren't going to see anyway.
I guarantee that when the Big Ten tournament final came out to be MSU and Michigan that a good number of students from each school made the trek to Indy. You can't really do that for DC or NYC. Maybe you could fly out but it isn't the finals where that would actually make sense monetarily
It's a good point, but imagine a Michigan-MSU final in NYC from a fan advantage standpoint. It would be a Michigan home game.
I think this is great. I'm guessing the percentage of our alums who are in NY and DC is the highest of the Midwestern Big Ten schools, other than perhaps Northwestern. But factor in how many more alums Michigan has per year and I think we'll have the largest fan base (of the midwestern schools, who are the conference bball powers) for these tournaments. Maryland and/or Rutgers may have more fans on hand, but neither program is a big concern right now. I'll take that over a Midwestern tournament where we have, at best, no fan base advantage (and more likely a disadvantage to Indiana and others).
I know this is a preferred forum for Brandon-bashing, but I think this takes into account a sizable portion of Michigan's constituency -- I seem to recall that NY state was the second or third most frequent home state of Michigan students. I'm in the East and I like the idea that once or twice a year I'll have an opportunity to drive to a game -- and it's only a few times per year that Michigan will be out here in football or basketball.
The numbers from a 2012 Washington Post article show that Michigan has more alumni in the DC area than any other Midwestern Big Ten school (the figure for Northwestern was N/A):
Illinois: 8,000
Indiana: 10,750
Iowa: 5,477
Michigan: 15,000
Michigan State: 10,500
Minnesota: 4,000
Nebraska: 1,300
Northwestern: 5,000
Ohio State: 9,400
Penn State: 12,000
Purdue: 1,678
Wisconsin: 8,490
MSU and IU's totals surprise me - more than OSU? I wouldn't have guessed that.
At other end, wow, Nebraska and Purdue alums seem to avoid DC like the plague.
Found some alumni numbers for the New York metro area in a 2010 WSJ item:
Penn State: 23,000
Michigan: 12,592
Ohio State: 4,600
Nebraska: 3,171
Interesting find -- I guess it makes sense that there would be that many Penn State alums in the NY area, given that they have 39,000 undergrads and they're probably not rushing to Philly as their regional post-grad destination. But that's a lot.
Nonetheless, I'll take being outnumbered by students/alums from Rutgers and Penn State in basketball over being outnumbered by Indiana or even-up with students from MSU and Ohio State (and I recall MSU/OSU fans collectively cheering against us when we played other teams at the last tournament).
Any step that gets the Big 10 closer to the target market of London, which is where a lot of UM grads are... hence clearly we will sell out... is a step in the right direction. Once the Big 10 absorbs Cambridge and Oxford, all you small minded people who are still worrying about "the east coast" and other places in AMERIKA will be so old fashioned.
Sincerely,
My post from 2023
I think NYC would provide a nice environment for Michigan and a definite home crowd advantage in most games (maybe with the exception of Maryland, which at best would be 50/50, I imagine, and I do think they'd outdraw Rutgers). Is the same true of D.C.? I'm not as sure. I certainly know they have a strong Michigan alumni base, but I'm not so sure it's any larger than other B1G bases like NYC is.
Nice places to visit! This is just the start. Soon the four soon to be formed power conferences that will make up the paid D1 atheletes will split up the USA like rabid players on a Risk board. The B1G just nabbed two key TV markets. Boston you are next, and we will have most of the conitguous Union states. TV revenues are supposed to be $40 million/year and going up! This is what is driving the ship and it can't be stopped.
Reply fail.
Sweet. I live outside DC in Arlington, VA as does my brother with his two kids. This will be a great chance for them to watch Michigan live and become fans for life.
Surprised more of you don't realize this isn't just about money but about helping to build the BIG's national brand, which cannot but help with scross-sport recruiting in very fertile recruiting areas. How many top 5 football recruits have come from Virginia the last 3 years?
East Coast recruits that would never watch Michigan play live once in their youth will now have a chance.
And for the rest of you, is a trip to DC all that bad? Incredible museums all for free, incredible history, great night scene (albeit not Chi/NY/LA/Miami level), but magnitudes better than the Royal Oak/Birmingham circuit.
I'm stoked, thanks for the great news Wolverine Devotee.
I think most of us realize that this is almost entirely about building the brand, which is just an obscuring way to say it's just about money. Thing is, it further dilutes the brand in its base region.
If a hybrid ACC/Big East is the conference the Big Ten wants to run, then just buy 10 teams out of those two conferences and run that conference there.
So Michigan becomes the only Big Ten state with two Big Ten schools and zero Big Ten bball tournaments. That's a travesty.
Indiana.
Indiana what? Indianapolis is in Indiana, no? IU is. Anybody else?
Hint: Purdue.
I misunderstood what you were saying. My bad.
no prob
Stupid. We are a mid-west conference. I mean I get we have alumni out in those cities but Indy/Chicago/Detroit/any other midwestern city are very central to A LOT more alumni here and on top of it, non-alumni who are fans who would travel to Indy for the day but might not travel to NYC/DC due to the price.
We are a mid-west conference
Not a fan of all the stuff Delany does, but one thing he has been very up-front about . . . he wants the B1G to not be just a mid-west conference. He has said repeatedly that he wants it to have a presence in areas with growing demographics. He does not want it to be the only major conference with a shrinking population base.
I'm looking at this from the perspective of a Michigan fan, and I don't see anything wrong with it. The crowds will have a much heavier Michigan lean than in Indy or Chicago, and the experience of playing in a major metropolitan area and being the "home team" crowd favorite ahead of all its rivals will carry over as good energy for the team in the real tournament.
Also, NYC and DC are both in the same time zone as Michigan, so it's obviously not some enormous distance, and they're both better cities than Indy or Chicago.
In terms of nightlife/bars/etc. Chicago blows DC out of the water. I'm not saying DC doesn't have its draws and good features, but if you're looking at it from the perspective of someone making a fun weekend trip out of it, most people will people Chicago over DC.
I've lived in NYC, DC, and Chicago. Obviously, New York is a different level, but I'd say DC is closer to that type of city than Chicago, which has the feelign of being a large area of suburbs that someone concentrated together, as opposed to urban (although I guess the comparative cleanliness of Chicago could subconsciously make me see it that way).
At what? Sucking ass?