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#MACtion - Weekday Football Games


johnnyzip84

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ESPN, and most of the athletic directors in the MAC for that matter, are more interested in themselves than the MAC schools. It makes no sense to me for us to participate in something that does not serve our best interests. The next deal the MAC makes with ESPN will probably be worse than the current.

There are now plenty of national sports networks on the air. The MAC should be looking for another network or a deal with a regional network I could watch at home on Direct TV. Our thinking is completely in the past.

We have met the enemy and we are us.

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  • 5 months later...

Someone explain to me how that's a good deal. For Akron it may be (because our attendance has sucked the past couple of years). But would the TV revenue (split amongst the teams) ever equal the lost revenue from ticket sales for being a weekday game? Thoughts...

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Someone explain to me how that's a good deal. For Akron it may be (because our attendance has sucked the past couple of years). But would the TV revenue (split amongst the teams) ever equal the lost revenue from ticket sales for being a weekday game? Thoughts...

Sure wouldn't seem like it. They said the old deal was $1M per year. Lets says it got upped to $1.2M. When the MAC shortly returns to 12 members that would be $100K per school per year. If the average ticket price sold over for those games was even $10, you'd only have to get 500 more fans at another couple of games instead of those Tuesday/Wednesday games if you get scheduled with two of them at home like the Zips did.

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Sure wouldn't seem like it. They said the old deal was $1M per year. Lets says it got upped to $1.2M. When the MAC shortly returns to 12 members that would be $100K per school per year. If the average ticket price sold over for those games was even $10, you'd only have to get 500 more fans at another couple of games instead of those Tuesday/Wednesday games if you get scheduled with two of them at home like the Zips did.

The old MAC deal was locked in at a stupidly low payout by the previous MAC commissioner. I'm pretty sure that's why he was replaced, in fact.

If the new deal isn't worth at least $15 million annually, the MAC is getting short-changed. The AAC's deal is $20 million, the MWC's deal is worth $18 million, and C-USA's is $14 million per year. The MAC in its current state is between the MWC and C-USA in terms of football quality.

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As I have stated before, I am a selfish fan. #Maction games are fantastic when I am not attending in person. If I am attending, I prefer the game to kick on Saturday night. Weekday night games are not only tailgater unfriendly, but are not attendance friendly in general and I think an empty stadium looks terrible on television. My 2 cents.

One thing that would make #Maction games better to view on television is a competent announcing team that is well versed on the conference instead of a couple of d-list rum dum rookies who work off a cheat sheet all night.

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As I have stated before, I am a selfish fan. #Maction games are fantastic when I am not attending in person. If I am attending, I prefer the game to kick on Saturday night. Weekday night games are not only tailgater unfriendly, but are not attendance friendly in general and I think an empty stadium looks terrible on television. My 2 cents.

One thing that would make #Maction games better to view on television is a competent announcing team that is well versed on the conference instead of a couple of d-list rum dum rookies who work off a cheat sheet all night.

I understand what you are saying, but I doubt we could ever get the attendance bump on a Saturday evening to make up for a potential 1-2 million a year ESPN deal per school.

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I understand what you are saying, but I doubt we could ever get the attendance bump on a Saturday evening to make up for a potential 1-2 million a year ESPN deal per school.

1-2 million dollars or 6 Saturday night home games? No brainer. How can you put a price tag on fun? :rock:

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The old MAC deal was locked in at a stupidly low payout by the previous MAC commissioner. I'm pretty sure that's why he was replaced, in fact.

If the new deal isn't worth at least $15 million annually, the MAC is getting short-changed. The AAC's deal is $20 million, the MWC's deal is worth $18 million, and C-USA's is $14 million per year. The MAC in its current state is between the MWC and C-USA in terms of football quality.

Good post Zach.

I mention above the next deal will be worse than the current deal. Even if there is more money, I am right.

If you are right, and you probably will be proven right, the MAC should be making at the high end. ESPN is desperate for content on Tuesday and Wednesday nights in the fall. The MAC helps them fill that void. Another factor you are not taking into consideration is how much ESPN is making off of the 3 hour Saturday night program advertising our games are making for them. They use our games to promote the Saturday line-up. Basically, the MAC games are an advertisement disguised as a football game.

These week night games are nothing more than money grabs at the cost of the long term health of the league. Since ADs and commissioners are more than willing to make the schools they "represent" suffer at the cost of their resume building, this should not be unexpected.

Remember guys, the enemy is not ESPN. The enemy is the group of ADs, Presidents and commissions employed by MAC schools.

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1-2 million dollars or 6 Saturday night home games? No brainer. How can you put a price tag on fun? :rock:

I agree. There has to be some fun for the fans. Week night games are like having your balls put in a vice for three hours. Eventually, the pain is so bad that you black out before the end of the three hours. Not fun.

I'm completely for foregoing the money for these games and passing the costs of the "building process" along to the taxpayers. It's basically what they are doing anyhow.

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To play the devil's advocate here: Compare these weekday games to what we currently have. We have an average "attendance" around 12,560 across 6 games. Maybe one of those is televised nationally (over the past two years I can only remember 1 game being on National Television. And out of our entire slate of games (12) we'd have 2 nationally/somewhat nationally (regional television) games aired. This deal easily gives us more National Attention than we ever have before (better this year than previous years because we are looking to make some noise...especially come November).

Now 2 of those games would be held at our stadium. 650k / 2 games held at home = 325 k per game. Assuming the average ticket price is actually $15 (Most GA tickets at the window on game day are 20-25...my season ticket average is that). You'd have to sell (325k/20) 16,250 more tickets to equal the television payout.

Assuming we share in ticket revenues over all games (I honestly have no idea how/if the MAC does this)...(take that 650k/4 games) you'd be around 162.5k per game. 162.5k/20 = 8250 additional tickets. I honestly doubt that the attendance between a weekday evening game differs that much from the TV revenue gained by this deal, to cover the difference.

A lot of us here are concerned about the financial sustainability of the MAC. Unfortunately, there it is folks...making deals like this. What the MAC needs to do, is to take care of business whenever it has the national spotlight (entertaining games, giving BIG schools a run for their money...beating BIG schools") and then maybe we can make more demands/get better times. Until then, enjoy the two nationally televised away games that you probably would have had to watch on crappy/shoddy internet streaming. Hopefully this deal means that Akron can purchase better video equipment.

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  • 5 weeks later...

Why is the Can't Stater public record requesting UA on the issue of the MAC ESPN contract. Couldn't they just as easily public record request Can't State?

In a side note: It is the almighty Akron Beacon Journal that should be breaking this. Not the Can't Stater. What an epic fail ABJ. LAZY reporting.

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