I asked a question on the main MAC board about the MAC television contract which has been extended with more generous terms for the remainder of the existing years plus much better terms for the 10 new years...

As one can see, under the old terms, basically the MAC was getting exposure plus minimal number of dollars. BTW, it does cost ESPN monies to produce these events, esp. football which I think isn't cheap.

The "re-negotiated" last 3 years of the current contract are much, much better and the 10 new years are better yet.

Starting in 6 or 18 months (?), 2016-17 (or '17/'18) school year, I believe each MAC team gets their share of 10M. 10M / 12 teams or 833K / school / year.

As I've been posting, ESPN + college football playoff conference distributions should near $2M / school / year pretty soon.

A couple years ago those numbers were a mere fraction of the 2M.

We are really being helped by external sources of income.

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"The current ESPN/MAC contract for 2007-2016 is 10yr/$14M, or $1.4M/yr.

ESPN voluntarily reopened negotiations on this contract to change the payout for the final 3yrs ('14-'16) from $1.4M/yr to $8M/yr.

The new ESPN/MAC contract for 2017-2026 is 10yr/$100M, or $10M/yr.

Part of the agreement was that ESPN would agree to broadcast more MAC sports like bball, volleyball, wrestling etc. on the condition that every MAC school commit to upgrading their broadcasting capabilities to ESPN standards. The MAC would have 4 years ('14-'17) to do it. The costs per school will vary depending on the state of their equipment but the extra $20M added to the current contract can be used to help offset those costs.

The MAC decided that 4yrs to convert 12 schools would mean an avg of 3 schools/yr with the schools most ready to upgrade going first. In year one (2014) the three schools that upgraded were NIU, CMU and Buffalo. In year two (2015) five more schools completed the upgrade and the final four schools are likely to upgrade in 2016.