Interesting article in Friday's USA Today. First of all, it doesn't matter that sometimes less than 20,000 fans attend the smaller bowl games. The article said they could stage the games in giant studios. It's all about the viewership. The bowl games draw an average audience of 1.1 million. This far exceeds most ESPN programming. Fox Sports 1 averages 472,000 on a Saturday with college baskets and MMA. ESPN bowl audiences on Saturday average 1.66 million. Advertisers love live programming because audiences can't DVR or TIVO it and fast forward through commercials. ESPN events owns and operates 11 of the bowl games. They are even adding another bowl game next year. What the article didn't say is why the viewers are attracted to mediocre games from lower conferences. I think that is obvious. It's the only football games that you can bet on that aren't on Sunday right now. Without wagering who the hell would be watching six win teams battle it out. Most of these teams don't deserve bowl games and it has cheapened the prestige of earning a spot to go to a bowl that existed in the past. To sell tickets they have to put them on Groupon. Some of these schools even lose money on bowl games and that's with money filtering down from the Big Daddy bowls like the Rose, Sugar, Orange and Fiesta. Last year one bowl game drew less than 1.2 million viewers and that's better than opening day baseball game of the Yankees and Red Sox. Twenty years ago there were 18 bowl games now there are 38.
