Here’s why men’s basketball is such a small factor in conference realignment

Kansas has one of the best men’s basketball programs in the country.

Ever since news broke that Texas and Oklahoma plan to join the SEC, rumors have swirled about which athletic programs will be the next to change conferences.

Almost all of that speculation has centered on football, with very little credence paid toward other sports.

Men’s basketball is the obvious No. 2 sport behind football, and many fan bases have pointed to the success and popularity of their men’s basketball programs as a reason a better conference should want their school.

But just how much does men’s basketball actually matter in these decisions?

TV revenue is the driving force behind realignment decisions, and Stewart Mandel from The Athletic — which does a better job covering the national college sports scene than anyone —reported that men’s basketball accounts for about 20 percent of each conference’s TV deal.

If that percentage seems high, remember this: Men’s basketball creates more inventory than football does because basketball teams play upwards of 30 games per season over a four-month span, while football teams play 12 games in a three-month span.

I would have loved to break down the average TV viewership for every major men’s basketball program the way I did for football, but TV numbers for regular-season basketball games are very difficult to find. There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence, though, that shows that football games are worth much, much more than men’s basketball games to TV networks.

Here are some numbers:

• During the 2020–21 season, the most-watched regular-season men’s basketball game was the Feb. 21 Michigan-Ohio State game on CBS, with 2.63 million viewers. Want to guess how many regular-season football games were watched by more than 2.63 million people last fall? 58.
• Andy Staples of The Athletic wrote a very informative article this week explaining that TV networks consider 4 million viewers to be their benchmark to consider something to be a premium product. There are typically about 35–40 regular-season football games per season that hit that mark. Meanwhile, the last regular-season men’s basketball game to even break 3 million was Duke-Virginia … in January 2019 (3.764 million).
• Looking at the five-year span of the 2014–15 school year through the 2018–19 school year, an average of 7.18 million more people watched the CFP championship game than the men’s basketball championship game each year. An average of 12.84 million more people watched the CFP semifinals than the Final Four each year.
• The CBS/Turner deal for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament is worth $990 million annually, which equates to an average of $14.78 million per game. ESPN’s deal for the College Football Playoff and associated bowls is worth more than $600 million annually, which equates to an average of at least $85.71 million per game.
• The next men’s basketball deal is estimated to be worth $1.1 billion annually, which equates to an average of $16.42 million per game. Meanwhile, the proposed 12-team College Football Playoff is estimated to be worth $1.9 billion annually, which equates to an average of $172.73 million per game.

College basketball also has another problem

Cincinnati has made six Final Fours, most recently in 1992.

The value of a college football game is already much higher than the value of a college basketball game. And there’s data that suggests that gap will continue to grow.

I was able to find a list of the Top 10 most-watched men’s basketball games from the 2014–15 regular season, and I was able to find the same list for the 2019–20 season. Here’s how those 20 games rank in one list:

1. Duke-UNC (2014–15) — 4.24 million
2. UNC-Duke (2014–15) — 4.14 million
3. Michigan State-Wisconsin (2014–15) — 3.97 million
4. Notre Dame-UNC (2014–15) — 3.53 million
5. Kentucky-Louisville (2014–15) — 3.50 million
6. Duke-Virginia (2014–15) — 3.49 million
7. Kentucky-Arkansas (2014–15) — 3.31 million
8. Kentucky-Florida (2014–15) — 3.27 million
9. Arkansas-Kentucky (2014–15) — 2.88 million
10. Maryland-Michigan State (2014–15) — 2.84 million
11. Duke-UNC (2019–20) — 2.67 million
12. Kansas-Duke (2019–20) — 2.42 million
13. St. John’s-Xavier (2019–20) — 2.30 million
14. Michigan State-Kentucky (2019–20) — 2.27 million
15. Ohio State-Kentucky (2019–20) — 2.27 million
16. UNC-Duke (2019–20) — 2.23 million
17. Michigan State-Purdue (2019–20) — 2.16 million
18. Louisville-Duke (2019–20) — 2.15 million
19. Kentucky-Texas Tech (2019–20) — 2.14 million
20. Ohio State-Michigan State (2019–20) — 2.05 million

That’s not a mistake on my end. The top 10 games are all from the 2014–15 season, while the bottom 10 are all from the 2019–20 season. That’s a sign that the popularity of men’s basketball is waning, at least for top-end games.

When we look at the same list for football, we see a mix of games from each season. Five of the top eight are from the 2019 season, but so are three of the bottom five. Based on this data, college football is, at worst, maintaining popularity, and, at best, still gaining.

1. LSU-Alabama (2019) — 16.64 million
2. Auburn-Alabama (2014) — 13.53 million
3. Notre Dame-Florida State (2014) — 13.25 million
4. Ohio State-Michigan (2019) — 12.42 million
5. Alabama-Auburn (2019) — 11.43 million
6. Mississippi State-Alabama (2014) — 10.27 million
7. Penn State-Ohio State (2019) — 9.43 million
8. Notre Dame-Georgia (2019) — 9.29 million
9. Alabama-LSU (2014) — 9.11 million
10. Florida State-Miami (2014) — 8.74 million
11. LSU-Texas (2019) — 8.63 million
12. Michigan-Ohio State (2014) — 8.23 million
13. Florida-Alabama (2014) — 7.95 million
14. Army-Navy (2019) — 7.72 million
15. Clemson-Florida State (2014) — 7.34 million
16. Oklahoma-Texas (2019) — 7.25 million
17. Texas A&M-Auburn (2014) — 7.21 million
18. Auburn-LSU (2019) — 7.18 million
19. Georgia-Florida (2019) — 6.98 million
20. Ohio State-Michigan (2014) — 6.83 million

There you have it. Men’s basketball games can be valuable commodities for TV networks, but they’re not anywhere near as valuable as football games. And that gap seems to be getting even bigger.

So when conferences are looking at possibly adding new schools and evaluating whether those schools will add enough value to justify splitting the revenue pie more ways, they’re looking for schools that can add dozens of premium football games to their TV package.

There are some great men’s basketball programs out there, but there aren’t any that can singlehandedly add the game-changing revenue conferences are looking for with these moves.