The unofficial online home for fans of the Western Michigan University Broncos. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

James Andrew Miller, who wrote a book on ESPN few years ago, was on The Dan Patrick Show Thursday.

He said ESPN has lost hundreds of thousands of subscribers recently resulting in huge financial losses.

They are looking at cutting talent and programming to offset them.

Perhaps MACtion will be one of the cuts.

My understanding is the contract still has several years to run, each MAC school gets $800k a year from it.

ESPN also has had made for TV preseason basketball tournaments in empty arenas. I have always wondered if advertising covered costs.

Maybe some of those ESPN bowl games will bite the dust. Bahamas Bowl?

(03-11-2017 08:52 AM)MajorHoople Wrote:  James Andrew Miller, who wrote a book on ESPN few years ago, was on The Dan Patrick Show Thursday.

He said ESPN has lost hundreds of thousands of subscribers recently resulting in huge financial losses.

They are looking at cutting talent and programming to offset them.

Perhaps MACtion will be one of the cuts.

My understanding is the contract still has several years to run, each MAC school gets $800k a year from it.

While the ESPN $ is nice, for the short term, for the long-term weeknight games are death for G5 programs. They evaporate the fan-base.

College football exists for the players, students and school-community (including alumni). Weeknight games are not in the best interest of any of the above.

The sooner the MAC can get itself out of this poorly thought-out commitment with ESPN, the better.

WMU and CMU should also tell both the MAC and ESPN to shove-it and play their game on Saturday afternoon at 1 p.m. It's OUR stadium. OUR rivalry. Take it, or leave it ESPN and MAC.

(03-11-2017 12:22 PM)GullLake Wrote:  

(03-11-2017 08:52 AM)MajorHoople Wrote:  James Andrew Miller, who wrote a book on ESPN few years ago, was on The Dan Patrick Show Thursday.

He said ESPN has lost hundreds of thousands of subscribers recently resulting in huge financial losses.

They are looking at cutting talent and programming to offset them.

Perhaps MACtion will be one of the cuts.

My understanding is the contract still has several years to run, each MAC school gets $800k a year from it.

While the ESPN $ is nice, for the short term, for the long-term weeknight games are death for G5 programs. They evaporate the fan-base.

College football exists for the players, students and school-community (including alumni). Weeknight games are not in the best interest of any of the above.

The sooner the MAC can get itself out of this poorly thought-out commitment with ESPN, the better.

WMU and CMU should also tell both the MAC and ESPN to shove-it and play their game on Saturday afternoon at 1 p.m. It's OUR stadium. OUR rivalry. Take it, or leave it ESPN and MAC.

Sounds nice, but it doesn't work that way. Money talks. Schools don't tell the MAC & ESPN what to do, ESPN tells both what to do.

(03-11-2017 08:52 AM)MajorHoople Wrote:  My understanding is the contract still has several years to run, each MAC school gets $800k a year from it.

The contract runs through 2027.

I'm not really buying the evaporation of the fan base argument. Playing these games on a Saturday would help attendance somewhat but its not like people are clamoring to watch your average MAC team in person on a 20 degree November Saturday. We've seen some pretty solid attendance numbers for the midweek games that actually matter.

Take the money and the exposure IMO. I'm sure I'm in the minority on this.

I think overall the G5 schools and conferences have benefited from the weekday games. If you are good you get noticed, whereas in the old days G5 schools rarely got games on TV at all, let alone a national audience. Unless they are having a great season, G5s are not going to draw much game attendance, even on a Saturday, when it is very cold out. Admitedly, I have probably skipped a game or two that I might have attended in person but for the fact that it was on TV, and weekday games at night would be a tough draw even for folks who live local, but in terms of exposure for the school, getting national games on ESPN helps I think.

(03-11-2017 08:52 AM)MajorHoople Wrote:  Perhaps MACtion will be one of the cuts.

Wild speculation meant to stir up the old-school base who hate weeknight games? Well done.

(03-12-2017 10:49 AM)broncofan1 Wrote:  

(03-11-2017 08:52 AM)MajorHoople Wrote:  Perhaps MACtion will be one of the cuts.

Wild speculation meant to stir up the old-school base who hate weeknight games? Well done.

"New-School" base doesn't like them any better.

That is the point.

Weeknight games erode a school's fan base.

When that fan base is thin to begin with, the short-term gain ($), does not equal the significant long-term loss ($$ and sense of passion).

Who is going to purchase season tickets in the next 5-15 years?

And when ESPN collapses (the sooner the better), who is going to watch?

Catch 22.

Let's face it: The conference doesn't have the "MACtion" brand without weeknight games. Many of those 100+ point shootouts occurred on nationally televised weeknight games. It's how it all started. So in a way, they WERE great.

However I think they've run their course. And attendance suffers for many of the obvious reasons (being on weeknights, colder temps in Nov., easy to watch on TV, etc.)

If we can't get students to come to games when they're undergraduates, who is going to come when they're alumni?

Getting the Greater Kalamazoo-SW Michigan area to attend has been an issue for a long time.

The purpose of the "MACtion" games is supposedly "exposure."

To achieve - what?

It's not increasing stadium attendance.

Recruiting? Maybe. Does that mean Fleck couldn't have gotten his highly-rated classes without us playing on November TV?

Thought that was mostly him.

Also, sure hasn't helped some of the other MAC schools in either recruiting or attendance..

I think it's a piece of the puzzle when it comes to recruiting. Sure, no kid is coming solely based on that. But these things add up.

When you look at recruiting rankings (imperfect to be sure, but the best we have) the MAC routinely is above SBC and CUSA, and is able to compete in the South with more local schools in many cases. I would think the ability to be seen on national TV is probably among the selling points.

Then after ESPN drops MACtion we're phucked as far as recruiting Down South and against SBC-CSUSA.

And then there's the pesky issue of home attendance.

Of course the suites will still be sold out thanks to the big money donors.

But the community at large and alums who paid money in undergrad student fees but didn't want to go to Tuesday-Wednesday night games in November will continue to stay away in numbers.

Yeah, I don't see attendance all of a sudden blossoming in November due to no Tues/Wed games. It's a tough call. But I think ESPN will stick to the contract, maybe shorten it or something. But CFB fans in general Like the idea to see a little MACtion (any football) available to flip the channel to on a boring Tue/Wed.

It would increase attendance, being on Saturdays -- but by how much? I think a university set to really get attendance going big with a plan in place & investment -- yeah, Tues/Wed games get in the way of that. But other than that, IMO, it's only positive -- and just puts pressure on a university not to let it help set a tone.

(03-12-2017 03:21 PM)MajorHoople Wrote:  Then after ESPN drops MACtion we're phucked as far as recruiting Down South and against SBC-CSUSA.

And then there's the pesky issue of home attendance.

Of course the suites will still be sold out thanks to the big money donors.

But the community at large and alums who paid money in undergrad student fees but didn't want to go to Tuesday-Wednesday night games in November will continue to stay away in numbers.

+1. I don't really see any gain in recruiting - and what is impressive to a recruit about a game with a mostly empty stadium on a weeknight? So I'm not surprised. And the erosion of the fanbase will be difficult if not impossible to reverse once people are gone, as they won't come back outside of a miracle.

The last 2 midweek November game WMU hosted was against BGSU and Ball State in 2015. We had a paid attendance of 14.5k for BGSU and Ball State was 12k.

Treating last season's attendance as an anomaly against our history, I looked back at a Saturday November 2014 game against Eastern and we had 13k.

Small sample size obviously, (as football typically seems to be) but it seems that the trade off is a hypothetical incremental increase in attendance vs going from the TV audience of ESPN/ESPN2 to ESPN3/ESPNU/ESPNNEWS.

I don't see any reason that November home Saturday games are better for the program than nationally televised weeknight games

It just makes the league look bush when it is played in an empty stadium. I said before, that there needs to be some kind of public relations campaign tied to charity that could put butts in the seats. Throwing it out there, but local high school bands in every MAC market could go out and sell tickets and get 100% of the revenue for the ticket sales, CONTINGENT ONLY if the people go through the damn gate. Make it a win-win. School programs need money, the league needs fans in the stands and the national exposure.

(03-14-2017 05:30 AM)uclabruin Wrote:  It just makes the league look bush when it is played in an empty stadium. I said before, that there needs to be some kind of public relations campaign tied to charity that could put butts in the seats. Throwing it out there, but local high school bands in every MAC market could go out and sell tickets and get 100% of the revenue for the ticket sales, CONTINGENT ONLY if the people go through the damn gate. Make it a win-win. School programs need money, the league needs fans in the stands and the national exposure.

The producers at ESPN need to do their jobs and make it LOOK like a full stadium. Like Animal Planet does for the Puppy Bowl.

What gained more exposure: hosting ESPN Gameday or the last 5 years of MACtion combined?

IMHO, the conference as a whole would benefit more by featuring 1 game of the week played on a Sat afternoon or evening. Sports in general has surpassed the point of overexposure. As a result, exposure for the sake of exposure doesn't have the impact it used to.