Editor’s Note: This is an ongoing story and will be updated as updates and new information become available.
On Feb. 16, Sacramento State officially joined the Mid-American Conference, making the leap into college football’s highest division, the FBS.
Since then, as the financial information on the university’s move has become public, questions have arisen about the viability and legitimacy of the numbers presented.
In an interview with President Luke Wood, he gave three main figures over the next five years while the deal is in effect:
- An annual economic impact of $975 million
- A broadcast exposure impact of $675 million
- Gameday revenue of $46 million
These figures were produced using projections given by Collegiate Consulting and were echoed by Wood in a tweet as well as multiple interviews and press conferences.
On Monday, Feb. 23, CBS Sports published a claim that Sac State mischaracterized the consultant’s findings. According to the article, the school might be “grossly overestimating its potential financial windfall” as a result of the FBS move.
Collegiate Consulting CEO Russell Wright claimed that his company was unaware that Wood and Sac State would extrapolate the numbers over five years.
“I don’t think that’s right,” Wright said to CBS Sports of the $675 million broadcast exposure impact. “That’s not anywhere in our report, so I 100% question that.”
Using television ratings from University of Toledo, Central Michigan University and Western Michigan University, CBS asked Collegiate Consulting for a revised number, which the firm provided.
Their revised estimate, between $81 million and $108.1 million in broadcast exposure depending on Sac State’s ratings, is still independent of other factors. Mainly, the novelty of FBS football and the nonregional aspect of the MAC, among other things.
Additionally, Wright was unsure about where the $46 million gameday revenue number came from.
“They gave us those projections for an annual, right? So each year, you can expect it to be this dollar amount, in terms of equivalence. The MAC deal is a five-year deal,” Wood said. “So I took the numbers that they had, and I multiplied it by five to say what the impact of the partnership with the MAC would be over the five-year timeframe. And if you look at anything that I put out there, it was very clear that I wrote in ‘over five years.’”
Collegiate Consulting seemingly recanted their statements to CBS the next day in a tweet, providing an estimated $972 million five-year projection.
In a podcast episode with The State Hornet, Wood was blunt in response to the CBS article. He said that the press coverage around the discrepancies was indicative of personal attacks and career ambition rather than truthful reporting.
“I’m used to getting hit pieces,” Wood said. “Whenever you’re doing something different and innovative, you just got to get used to that.”
RELATED: Sacramento State officially joins the Mid-American Conference
On Feb. 24, the Los Angeles Times posted an article of their own, having multiple economic experts weigh in on Sac State’s move.
The article focused on the methodology of Collegiate Consulting, claiming that their estimates are too reliant on an outdated metric known as advertising equivalent value.
The premise of AVE is that advertising has a cost and that a football game could be considered as a multiple-hour-long ad that has a calculable value.
According to experts, this strategy has been moved away from in the industry due to their inaccuracy, claiming that Sac State is “conflating just being on TV with actual advertising.”
