In the meantime, get ready for some Tuesday and Wednesday night home games. Attendance will be interesting for those nights.
This could be a disaster still with midweek games that kill attendance and momentum.
I’ve seen several people making a big deal out of these weeknight games, but is it really?
They only do the Midweek MACtion thing in November. Looking over about a half dozen schedules from 2025, the most any MAC team played Tuesday/Wednesday games was four (Massachusetts). Some only played one (Ball State) or two (Buffalo).
So, at most we’re looking at two home games played on Tuesday or Wednesday nights in November, and possibly only one.
That’s not that big of a deal, far as I can tell. And the novelty and exclusivity of it might actually turn out well. I mean, what else is going on Tuesday/Wednesday nights in November? No NFL games. No MLB games. Maybe only the occasional KINGS game?
I kinda anticipated TV/streaming viewership might be pretty good since the sports betters don’t have much else going on midweek and a cursory google search reveals the following:
“MACtion"—the Mid-American Conference's tradition of weeknight football games in November—consistently draws significantly higher television viewership on Tuesdays and Wednesdays compared to Saturday games, often by a factor of 10x or more. These games, broadcast on ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPNU, frequently secure 100,000 to over 400,000 viewers, with high-profile matchups even exceeding 700,000.
So, while in-person attendance could definitely suffer — remote viewership should be really good according to the info above. Did Sac State forgo revenue in this deal? I hope not considering the $$$ they had to pay to get in.
Lastly, one could point out that November home games in Sacramento/NorCal doesn’t present the same cold weather challenges that occur in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York.
So perhaps Sac State’s home attendance might not suffer the same level of drop off as all the other MAC teams. We shall see.
