The NCAA May Have Secured a Commitment for Linear Television for Swimming & Diving Next Season

In spite of the uproar about the new NCAA Championship format the over the last 10 days, college swimming & diving administrators are privately telling coaches that they believe that they have secured a commitment from ESPN to air at least one day of next year’s NCAA Swimming & Diving Championships live on linear television*.

*(aka traditional television, ESPN/ESPN 2/ESPN U/etc.)

Members of the NCAA Swimming & Diving Committee told SwimSwam that they were not able to comment on those reports yet.

While the CSCAA put out a public statement earlier this week acknowledging the public response and saying that the format will “require adjustment,” decision makers are still privately celebrating the success of the new format.

Analysis

Via multiple conversations over the last few days, I believe I better understand the disconnect between the folks making the decisions and the general public, coaches, and swimmers.

As one coach put it so eloquently: “they’re building a meet for TV, not for live stream.”

What that means is this: all those gaps in the current format kill the energy and momentum of the meet for now. And while the hoi polloi sees it as dead air, TV people don’t need to actually see those gaps filled to understand what goes there.

I think that this is what Drew Johansen meant when he said in an editorial earlier this week that “this broadcast now serves as a proof of concept that we can present to networks to market our product and strengthen our position within our universities, conferences, and the NCAA.”

On a livestream, that’s dead air, or filled awkwardly with old races from past NCAA Championship meets like it was last year.

In a proper linear television broadcast, that ‘dead air’ is filled with interviews and engaging human interest pieces. The kind that we’ve all become so used to in televised sports that we don’t necessarily pause and think about the time that has passed.

And I see it.

But I still think you could run B-Finals during those breaks to create a better environment in the building. As the format is, and with Georgia Tech not allowing re-entries, there are reports of parents of certain teams leaving the venue for tailgating during the long breaks, and buying new tickets to get back in for the rest of the session.

I still think you could tighten up the timeline a little bit.

I appreciate the attempts to improve the format. We all asked for that, and we got it. I appreciate the vision. And if you appreciate those things, you should make sure you tell those folks what you appreciate.

But that doesn’t mean the product is ‘right’ yet. All of the stakeholders have to be considered. The revenue from ticket sales at the NCAA Championships is not insignificant. A full meet pulls in $350,000+ in ticket revenue, plus parking and concessions and all of the other economic drivers that go with it.

The sport has to find new fans to thrive. But the middle ground is I think what is being ignored. There are a lot of ex-swimmers who are not swim fans. They don’t follow the sport while they compete, or once they stop competing, or either. I think if we can figure out how to capture those people, then we have a real market and a good foundation to build off to go find the new-to-the-sport audience.