How will the CBS Sports deal change midweek MACTION?

CBS Sports Network has reached a multi-year deal to televise college football and basketball games from the Mid-American Conference.  The deal, which begins this season and continues through 2018-19, is through a sublicense agreement with ESPN.

CBS Sports Network will air up to 12 football and 12 basketball games per year, with the first year calling for six football games and up to seven basketball games. In 2015, the six football games will include two Thursday and three Saturday games, as well as one game on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

How will this possibly change the way football is televised for the MAC and will it still be viable for the MAC to play midweek games on a sports channel with much less of a footprint than ESPN. During the first year of this deal, CBS Sports will air six games from the MAC but the number will double in the upcoming years with many of the midweek games that were anticipated on ESPN will then be on CBS Sports.

Part of the rise of the MAC in recent years and the ability to get a higher level of exposure and higher rated group of recruits came from the ESPN deal. During the fall, midweek has been a tough area to fill for sports consumption and the type of football the MAC plays is greatly suited to a casual fan looking for an exciting game on television.

Will that same casual fan make it to CBS Sports before finding another option for entertainment or will CBS Sports still get the same exposure for the conference? If a casual football fan finds Toledo-Buffalo on TV, that is not only a showcase for those two teams but the entire conference as a whole. With CBS sports, that showcase can never be the same size as on ESPN.

ESPN will still televise several MAC games so the MAC footprint at that network is not totally gone but it is diminished with the CBS Sports announcement.

I am hoping for the best because CBS Sports is more likely to advertise MAC football and put more overall into the production but losing the casual viewers that check ESPN for live sports first will hurt TV numbers significantly at the beginning.