theblueram wrote:What college would pay to have their games on TV? The A10 has an outstanding TV deal with multiple networks. If the games can't produce the viewership, then the team shouldn't be on tv. But no college is ever going to pay to have their games on tv.
As surprising as it is, a number of schools actually do "pay to have their games on TV", both in the sense of paying a network's production team to come shoot the game, and also in the sense that some schools buy airtime from networks and then air their own production of games. As someone has mentioned,
Quinnipiac does the latter; produces their own hockey games and then buys airtime on
NESN and
SNY.
The advantage to doing this is increased exposure and also because then the school can sell the ad time during the games to sponsors to try to make money back (or even a profit) on the expense. This is also how D2
Southern New Hampshire University has had nearly a dozen games a year on
NESN+ the past few seasons for their men's and women's basketball teams. It's not always a bad idea, especially on a network where the time is cheap, and with a athletics department capable of selling the ad time for a decent price.