“It was an absolutely horrible time to be out there (in 2016),” MacLeod, the C-USA commissioner, said Wednesday at the league’s football media day.
The league’s previous rights deals expired last summer, right in the middle of a nationwide cord-cutting trend. Fewer subscribers led to belt tightening for cable TV networks, which led to less money for C-USA.
League programs used to pull in $1.1 million annually from the league’s previous rights deal. That dropped to $300,000 per program as part of the new deal that kicked in for the 2016-17 season.
The conference only inked a two-year TV package.