MAC and ESPN Announce Rights Agreement Through 2016-17
1/28/2009 12:00:00 AM | General
Cleveland, OH
The MAC and ESPN announced today a new eight-year rights agreement,
running through the 2016-17 academic year, for football, and men's and
women's basketball that will be the most extensive in the 63-year
history of the conference.
The announcement was made at the conclusion of the MAC Joint Committee meetings held this week in
“Through
demonstrated audience growth and success, both on the field and on the
court, the MAC has proven to be a very popular and competitive
conference,” said Burke Magnus, ESPN senior vice president, college
sports programming. “The MAC and its member institutions have always
had a shared vision of the benefits of creative scheduling. We are
excited to continue to provide national exposure of their football and
men's and women's basketball action across our multiple platforms
including significant coverage on ESPNU.”
“The
breadth of this agreement, both in terms of the overall number of MAC
events televised as well as the scope of the ESPN networks involved,
truly solidifies the conference's long-term television future,” said
MAC Commissioner
In
addition to continuing broad distribution of MAC football, the new
agreement considerably strengthens ESPN's commitment to MAC men's and
women's basketball. There will be a minimum of six (6) MAC men's or
women's regular-season conference games televised annually on either
ESPN, ESPN2 or ESPNU, and the MAC will continue to fully participate in
ESPN's highly-successful ESPNU BracketBusters event, which the
conference joined as a founding member in 2003. The
agreement also calls for increased involvement of MAC basketball
programs in ESPN's owned-and-operated regular-season tournaments.
The
MAC's two basketball tournament championship games are also a key
component of the new agreement, as the MAC women's final has the
potential for selection by ESPNU based upon tournament format. This
would mark the first-ever national telecast of the MAC's women's
championship game. The MAC men's tournament final will continue to be
broadcast on ESPN/ESPN2, where it has been televised since 1987.
The
Marathon MAC Football Championship game remains the foundation of a
national television football package that will average six (6)
nationally-televised games annually on either ESPN or
The
MAC's nine (9) nationally-televised home games in the 2008
regular-season averaged a 1.1 rating, with six (6) exceeding a 1.0
rating.
The
new agreement calls for continuation of the MAC's November mid-week
national football package, with increased structure and parameters
providing multiple games for selection by ESPN/ESPN2/ESPNU for those
mid-week windows. MAC student-athletes continue to perform at a high
level, academically as well as competitively, as the league leads the
11 Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) conferences in football graduation
rates for public institutions. The MAC is the only conference with more
than half of its schools graduating football players at a rate of 70
percent or above in the latest data release by the NCAA.
Regionally,
ESPN is making a multi-year commitment to a six-week over-the-air,
syndicated football package on broadcast stations across the MAC
geography, continuing the success of this effort from the 2007 and 2008
seasons. The MAC Game-of-the-Week has reached
approximately 175,000 households weekly in the first two years of the
package, with weekly distribution in the Top 40 markets of
