Stadium To Produce 15 College Football Games for Exclusive Live Distribution on Facebook

Nine Conference USA, six Mountain West games to get the social-media treatment

Stadium — the new multiplatform sports network owned by Silver Chalice, Sinclair Broadcast Group, MLBAM, the NHL, PGA TOUR, and Time Inc. — is poised to become a notable player in the national college-football television landscape this fall.

With a lineup of 28 games on digital and over-the-air platforms already rolled out last week, Stadium this morning announced a partnership with Facebook to exclusively broadcast 15 additional college football games — nine from Conference USA and six from the Mountain West Conference — live exclusively on the social-media platform.

“It’s [exciting] to be able to engage [viewers] in something different,” says Adam Anshell, SVP of Properties for Stadium. “We’re trying to be unique, different, and forward-thinking. We don’t want to be the same old, same old. As a company we want to be out there experiencing and engaging in new things. This allows us to have different interaction with the audience and direct feedback.”

Stadium has big plans to make these productions unique and to leverage the interactivity of the social-media platform. The broadcasts are expected to feature content-production teams on the sidelines looking to create deeper access to correspondents positioned near the action; live and curated chat between on-air talent, fans, and other college-football personalities; and more.

“We’re trying to break the mold a little bit from what we typically do. We really want to tailor this to the [Facebook] audience and try to make it a very engaging conversation and experience that’s different from what you would typically see on television. It’s about having the audience involved in the experience as opposed to just having them watch it.”

According to Anshell, Stadium will partner with an independent production company on these Facebook exclusive broadcasts. It will look very much like a traditional show behind-the-scenes with a production truck on site and experienced college football production and operations talent in the truck and at the front bench.

“Ultimately these are still football games,” says Anshell. “We don’t want to be taking away from the competition on the field and we want to do these schools and student athletes justice by telling a good story. We will produce a football game, but around that we want to engage the audience in conversation.”

Anshell added that additional staff will be hired to focus specifically on additional, social-centric content such as graphics for chat and fan polling.

These games will be available to a global audience on Facebook on the Stadium: Live College Football page. Viewers in the U.S. will also be able to find the games in Watch, Facebook’s newly released video platform.

Here’s the full schedule for the season (all times ET):

Saturday Sept. 2
Miami Ohio at Marshall, 6:30 p.m.
UC Davis at SDSU, 8:30 p.m.

Thursday Sept. 7
Idaho State at Utah State, 8:00 p.m.

Saturday Sept. 9
New Mexico State at New Mexico, 8:00 p.m.

Saturday Sept. 23
FIU at Rice, 7:30 p.m.
Utah State at San Jose State, 7:30 p.m.

Saturday Sept. 30
Texas State at Wyoming, 4:00 p.m. ET

Saturday Oct. 7
Southern Miss at UTSA, 7:00 p.m.

Saturday Oct. 14
Wyoming at Utah State, 4:30 p.m.

Saturday, October 21
Rice at UTSA, 7:00 p.m. ET

Saturday Oct. 28
FIU at Marshall, 2:30 p.m.

Saturday Nov. 4
North Texas at LA Tech, 3:30 p.m.

Saturday, November 11
Southern Miss at Rice, 3:30 p.m. ET

Saturday Nov. 18
Marshall at UTSA, 7:00 p.m.

Saturday Nov. 25
FAU at Charlotte, 2:00 p.m.