MACTION

[MarkL]

I would gladly pay a fee to watch all BG games, or even all MAC games, on a consistently high quality stream in exchange for all games being played on Saturday where college football belongs. I would imagine it would be relatively easy for the conference to contract a small production crew, a medium size high quality web streaming service, and then charge a subscription fee by the game, team, weekend, or entire season.

[Schadenfreude]

Only the MAC Commish, the presidents and ADs know if the money lost in attendance is made up in ESPN revenue....

There is no doubt in my mind that revenue is much better in the current situation than it would be if we were playing Saturday games.

Crowds have always been bad in November for bad MAC teams, even when they were playing on Saturdays. Go back and look at the old box scores if you don't believe me. Were the slightly better? Maybe slightly. But only slightly. (And let's remember that all of college football has been in a bit of an attendance slide across the board, for whatever reason.)

Bottom line: With #MACtion, in-person attendance across the league is slightly worse than it would be on Saturdays. But only slightly. But more people see the games because they are nationally televised, and ESPN pays us pretty well for this. The MAC is definitely better off than it would be playing on Saturdays.

Personally, I think the MAC would be better off with a FS1 deal or CBS College Sports package. Stream all the other games on the MAC website....

I doubt you could find a single AD to agree with you on this.

[Schadenfreude]

I would gladly pay a fee to watch all BG games, or even all MAC games, on a consistently high quality stream in exchange for all games being played on Saturday where college football belongs. I would imagine it would be relatively easy for the conference to contract a small production crew, a medium size high quality web streaming service, and then charge a subscription fee by the game, team, weekend, or entire season.

I don't think there is a market for this. Bowling Green tried charging for all team audio feeds several years ago -- it was a flat rate for access to all games by all teams, if memory serves -- and they abandoned it several weeks into the football season. I assume the reason was that very few people signed up.

[hammb]

I agree that there is no viable market for a pic to access stream of Mac sports. People expect internet content to be largely free. Espn3 works because it's tied to contracts with your ISP.

When talking about November attendance and the effects of weeknight games I think it's far deeper than saying it hurts November attendance only slightly and thus is good. I have done no research so I can only speak my own anecdotal experience. The weeknight games that I didn't enjoy attending were what largely led me to dropping my season tickets. After dropping season tickets I still went to the satursay games, which gradually became only the compelling Saturday matchups, which gradually became only when we were good, which has now become I'm a pure fairweather fan that hasn't attended a single home game this year.

And I can see the Doyt from my backyard.

Would I have become a more casual fan because of my life changes had we still played on Saturdays all the time? I don't know. But I do know I can pinpoint the exact moment I decided to stop buying season tickets to a November weeknight game years ago. I was sitting by myself in the stands because nobody I k ew wanted to be there, and I had spent a solid 20 mins outside trying to find somebody to take my extra tickets for free and nobody wanted them.

I said it was stupid to feel n obligation like that. I did buy Tix again for dinos first year because he got me excited, but then it was more of the same anniyance with weeknight games and I don't foresee ever buying season tickets again.

[Flipper]

Audio only is a loser...nobody wants to sit and listen to anything that they've been trained to interact with visually.

Trying to charge for streaming anything is problematic as it's too damn easy to steal. I think it's easier to stream stuff through Youtube, Facebook or Twitter so you don't have to establish your own over the top network. Would the MAC be able to do a collective deal with it's members like it used to now that the infrastructure is less costly and more readily available? Maybe...

I quit going to games a few years ago. Like Hammb I had season tickets and realized I wasn't using them at all for midweek games and it was getting harder to organize my weekend around the games that were on Saturdays Midweek games are evil because you it makes following the conference seem like work...I start to lose interest after the 1st because I don't know who's playing and when. It puts a damper on the whole she-bang for me.

[jpfalcon09]

Seems like we have this debate every season. It's certainly not ideal for the fans, but the commissioner's job is to make as much money for the conference as he can. A deal with ESPN to provide them with mid-week content makes much more sense for his job than playing on Saturday afternoons in front of normally scant crowds due to either poor performance or poor weather.

As sad as it seems, the MAC needs to stand out from the rest of the college football crowd late in the season and this is really their only way to do it. No one outside of the die-hard fans of MAC schools would even bat an eye if the conference played an important game on a Saturday in the face of Alabama/LSU or Michigan/Ohio State. They'd be just another score on the ESPN ticker. But, you get the chance tonight for example to expose a nationally ranked and undefeated team to an audience who otherwise wouldn't pay attention. That counts for something for the conference.

[apollo]

Personally, I think the MAC would be better off with a FS1 deal or CBS College Sports package. Stream all the other games on the MAC website....

I doubt you could find a single AD to agree with you on this.

Problem is that I'm not sure how many MAC ADs do what's best for their schools and conference. They will make poor decisions for their school because they think it will help them get their next job.

[Flipper]

Yep...it's all about creating an attractive looking three or four year window to pad that resume

[Schadenfreude]

Problem is that I'm not sure how many MAC ADs do what's best for their schools and conference. They will make poor decisions for their school because they think it will help them get their next job.

Wut.