After the league schedule came out on Tuesday, I immediately was interested to see what games that Butler had on which networks. But after seeing the difference between their TV package and Villanova’s, I started to wonder what kind of deal all of the teams got in the league to see if there was a reason behind the difference beyond a team’s performance on the court.

First off, I want to make sure I make a point to say that the arrangement with Fox and the Big East is a huge boon to both Butler as well as the rest of the conference, both monetarily and for overall exposure for each University and College in the league. With the new Big East Digital Sports content, this exposure will only grow for all of the non-Men’s Basketball teams, so I don’t intend this to be a moan and groan session about how mean Rupert Murdoch is, or how Butler unjustly got the short end of the stick because they’re the only non-Catholic school in the league. Every conference wants to promote each school in the league as evenly and fairly as possible. Even so, TV networks want eyes glued to their channels, so as much as the conference will try to equalize things for each school, some teams will always get a little more than others (remember the Horizon League?). So who are the most valuable teams in the conference to Fox and the games they control? To determine that, we first have to look at the available channels that the Big East schools have available to them and the number of households that each of these channels reach. For some of the Regional Cable channels (such as FSN and FCS), these numbers are merely an estimate. Here are the available networks that the Big East has for its non-conference home games and conference games in Men’s Basketball.

Fox – Network channel, it’s a LOT, but let’s say 116,300,000 based on the latest Nielsen report of total American homes with some form of television provided

FS1 – 85,798,000

FS2 – 37,707,000

FSN/FCS – These figures aren’t readily available, but let’s be generous and say 15,000,000

CBS – 116,300,000

CBSSN – 53,000,000

Rhode Island TV – Providence plays against Rhode Island at home on this channel. Again, I’ll be generous and give it a nice even number of 10,000,000 households.

So with each of these channels, there is a varying degree of exposure that Big East teams will get. While the broadcasts can sometimes depend on what else might be going on the date and times of games, for the most part, if a team is going to get ratings and a network has the rights to their broadcasts, they’ll get put on the biggest channel. So, after pouring through each school’s posted schedule and examining the networks that will broadcast their home non-conference games and their conference home and road games, here’s where each school falls in terms of total potential homes reached during the year, as well as the average number of homes that each of their games can reach.



Butler Bulldogs – 25 games

The total number of homes reached: 1,530,704,000

Average homes reached per game: 61,228,160



Network Number of Games Fox 1 Fox Sports 1 12 Fox Sports 2 4 FSN/FCS 5 CBSSN 3



Creighton Bluejays – 26 games

The total number of homes reached: 1,942,667,000

Average homes reached per game: 74,717,962



Network Number of Games Fox Sports 1 20 Fox Sports 2 1 FSN/FCS 2 CBSSN 3



DePaul Blue Demons – 25 games

The total number of homes reached: 1,846,778,000

Average homes reached per game: 73,871,120



Network Number of Games Fox Sports 1 18 Fox Sports 2 2 FSN/FCS 1 CBSSN 4



Georgetown Hoyas – 25 games

The total number of homes reached: 1,970,831,000

Average homes reached per game: 75,801,192



Network Number of Games Fox 1-2 Fox Sports 1 16-17 Fox Sports 2 2 FSN/FCS 2 CBS 1 CBSSN 2



Marquette Golden Eagles – 26 games

The total number of homes reached: 1,846,782,000

Average homes reached per game: 71,030,077



Network Number of Games Fox 1 Fox Sports 1 16 Fox Sports 2 2 FSN/FCS 4 CBS 1 CBSSN 2



Providence Friars – 26 games

The total number of homes reached: 1,604,088,000

Average homes reached per game: 61,695,692



Network Number of Games Fox 1 Fox Sports 1 13 Fox Sports 2 2 FSN/FCS 5 CBSSN 4 Rhode Island TV 1



Seton Hall Pirates – 23 games

The total number of homes reached: 1,558,928,000

Average homes reached per game: 67,779,478



Network Number of Games Fox 0-1 Fox Sports 1 14-15 Fox Sports 2 1 FSN/FCS 4 CBSSN 3



St. John’s Red Storm – 26 games

The total number of homes reached: 1,956,170,000

Average homes reached per game: 75,237,308



Network Number of Games Fox 2-4 Fox Sports 1 14-16 FSN/FCS 3 CBS 1 CBSSN 3 No TV 1



Villanova Wildcats – 26 games

The total number of homes reached: 2,284,822,000

Average homes reached per game: 87,877,769



Network Number of Games Fox 4-5 Fox Sports 1 17-18 Fox Sports 2 1 CBS 1 CBSSN 2



Xavier Musketeers – 25 games

The total number of homes reached: 1,604,137,000

Average homes reached per game: 64,165,480



Network Number of Games Fox 1-2 Fox Sports 1 13-14 Fox Sports 2 2 FSN/FCS 6 CBSSN 2

So that puts the league’s final rankings as follows in terms of average homes reached per game:

1. Villanova – 87,877,769

2. Georgetown – 75,801,192

3. St. John’s – 75,237,308

4. Creighton – 74,717,962

5. DePaul – 73,871,120

6. Marquette – 71,030,077

7. Seton Hall – 67,779,478

8. Xavier – 64,165,480

9. Providence – 61,695,692

10. Butler – 61,228,160

When analyzing these figures, one thing to keep in mind, the Providence Friar’s home game against Rhode Island will be played on Rhode Island TV, which definitely hurts their average. Excluding that game would bring up their average to 63,763,520 households per game. Similarly for St. John’s, whose game against Franklin Pierce won’t be broadcast at all. Excluding that game from St. John’s average would bring their average up to 78,246,800, which would actually put them 2nd in the league behind Villanova.

So what’s driving the networks to give the more desirable channels to some teams and not to others? Obviously one is going to be performance and expected performance going forward. But if it’s purely performance, then why do teams who have historically struggled, such as DePaul get to reach more homes than a team that won the league tourney like Providence, who is also expected to keep doing well with their recruiting? I don’t know for sure, but a large piece also appears to be the market in which the school resides and where that school stands in that market. For some background, here are the rankings for each Big East city, with their national rank in parentheses:

1. New York, NY (1)

2. Chicago, IL (3)

3. Philadelphia, PA (4)

4. Washington, DC (9)

5. Indianapolis, IN (25)

6. Cincinnati, OH (34)

7. Milwaukee, WI (35)

8. Providence, RI (52)

9. Omaha, NE (76)

10. South Orange, NJ (NR) – you could somewhat lump them in with New York as well

So what’s the issue for Butler? Not only is it the performance of the team on the court, which definitely needs to improve, but I believe a big reason for getting handed the worst TV package in the league has more to do with where they are at in the eyes of those who live and work in Indianapolis. Butler is definitely behind Indiana and Purdue in the market, and the argument could be made that they’d be behind other teams in the Big Ten, Louisville and likely Kentucky as well. This isn’t going to change any time soon, and neither is Indianapolis’ position in the national rankings for television markets. So, while I hate when this phrase gets used, it unfortunately “Is what it is”. Even if Butler were to become more successful in the league, Xavier has the same problems being in Cincinnati with UC, Ohio State and the Kentucky teams, which is why they are in 8th place in terms of the number of households they are allowed to penetrate this season despite their long history and likely future of success. Meanwhile, the larger market teams such as St. John’s, Villanova, DePaul and Georgetown will likely frequently get the better channels because of the larger markets they occupy, as well as the fact that they are the premier team in the area, or in DePaul’s case that there isn’t one team that owns the marketplace so it’s worth it for Fox to continue to pursue that market.

So what do you think of these rankings and what does Butler need to do to climb higher in them? Comment and let us know, and don’t forget to discuss this and all things Butler Basketball over at the message board.

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