Dan Wetzel of Yahoo Sports reports. Great news for the MAC!

https://twitter.com/DanWetzel/status/175...6532004328

(01-31-2024 07:14 PM)BeatWestern! Wrote:  Dan Wetzel of Yahoo Sports reports. Great news for the MAC!

https://twitter.com/DanWetzel/status/175...6532004328

Yes! I've been calling for this for years. Alumni, students and other fans of the programs are served by swapping these games to Saturdays and having some other game on the weekend ... while the average #MACtion viewer doesn't much care whether a game is a MAC rivalry game, they are just looking for a football game to watch.

Though I have to say it's a bit cold to give no love to EMU or Ball State.

Copied your post (with credit) to the NIU forum. Some don't stop by here.

And yes ... great news!

Could be expanded, with plenty left for weeknights. Or perhaps weeknights on ESPN3-and-+ or ESPNU-and-+.

(01-31-2024 07:14 PM)BeatWestern! Wrote:  Dan Wetzel of Yahoo Sports reports. Great news for the MAC!

https://twitter.com/DanWetzel/status/175...6532004328

Get rid of the ESPN weekday contract (or singificantly reduce the inventory and only play one MACtion game per week like SBC) and this wouldn't be an issue. Let CUSA play all the weekdays games on ESPNU.

(01-31-2024 07:46 PM)pvk75 Wrote:  ... Could be expanded, with plenty left for weeknights. Or perhaps weeknights on ESPN3-and-+ or ESPNU-and-+.

The MAC should surely push for all ESPN3 games to also be on ESPN+, and if they get that, should push for all ESPNU games to also be on ESPN+.

But the only real expansion of reserving rivalry games for Saturdays would be Ball State / Miami and EMU / CMU.

Other than that, the push would be for a viable Saturday game partner that is an upgrade on the CBSSN sub-licensing, since with the MWC and CUSA, CBSSN only needs a Saturday game here and there during the season. The outlet that comes to mind is the CW, which is expanding their sports offerings but for FB only has legacy ACC rights held onto from an RSN contract pre-dating the ACCN. Replacing the CBSSN sub-licensing with a sub-licensing deal where the CW has a weekly Saturday MAC game in October and November, simulcast with ESPN+, would put the MAC on Basic Cable (and OTA in some markets) on Saturdays without fracturing the streaming access.
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(01-31-2024 07:58 PM)epasnoopy Wrote:  

(01-31-2024 07:14 PM)BeatWestern! Wrote:  Dan Wetzel of Yahoo Sports reports. Great news for the MAC!

https://twitter.com/DanWetzel/status/175...6532004328

Get rid of the ESPN weekday contract (or singificantly reduce the inventory and only play one MACtion game per week like SBC) and this wouldn't be an issue. ...

Yes, get rid of the main exposure the MAC gets during the regular season and step down to the a lower value media contract, and this would indeed not be an issue.

In other word, increase the amount of subsidy required from the MAC school budgets while decreasing the appeal of providing those subsidies. That sounds like a real plan.

(02-01-2024 08:20 AM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(01-31-2024 07:58 PM)epasnoopy Wrote:  

(01-31-2024 07:14 PM)BeatWestern! Wrote:  Dan Wetzel of Yahoo Sports reports. Great news for the MAC!

https://twitter.com/DanWetzel/status/175...6532004328

Get rid of the ESPN weekday contract (or singificantly reduce the inventory and only play one MACtion game per week like SBC) and this wouldn't be an issue. ...

Yes, get rid of the main exposure the MAC gets during the regular season and step down to the a lower value media contract, and this would indeed not be an issue.

In other word, increase the amount of subsidy required from the MAC school budgets while decreasing the appeal of providing those subsidies. That sounds like a real plan.

Many of these weekday games end up on ESPNU or no ESPN channels at all. I'm sorry but ESPNU is barely "exposure". Multiple midweek MAC games on ESPNU get 80k viewers or less. Think about that number for a second. 80k viewers is 1,600 people per US state. Those are pretty miniscule viewership numbers.

Also, you are asumming the money goes down for less content. The SBC plays significantly less weekday games than the MAC yet receives MORE money per school than us. Main reason why is because our leadership locked us into a new 13-year contract in 2014. SBC's current deal got them current market $$.

1600 viewers in Wyoming is excellent!

This was announced earlier last year, I thought.

(02-02-2024 09:53 PM)MidnightBlueGold Wrote:  This was announced earlier last year, I thought.

Searching around, this seems to have been announced in July.

I guess it is doing the rounds as a breaking "likely to" tweet because a lot of the people involved don't pay any attention to scheduling news out of the MAC between July and the open weekend between the NFL Conference Championships and the Superb Owl.

It also is not really great news, just "it could be worse" news, since "rotating out" means two years midweek (H/A), and two years on Saturday (H/A), with one of the four rotating into MACtion play in the year that another of the four rotates into Saturday.

So MACtion still gets two of the four biggest rivalry games every year, which is obviously less than ideal.

The MAC needs to keep pressing until all four are available to be played in October every year.