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Many football fans didn’t like that the Arizona State football team had to play on a Thursday last week. It was a road game in San Marcos against Texas State. That put the Sun Devils at a competitive disadvantage after playing the previous Saturday, which meant a limited few days to prepare with one day having to go toward travel.
The Sun Devils prevailed 31-28 but the change paid off elsewhere. It was made to give ASU the chance to play on ESPN in a desired time slot. They were the only game that night, which resulted in an audience of 993,384 viewers, which it would not have gotten if the game were on a Saturday.
Last season ASU’s first three games, one airing on the now-defunct Pac-12 Network and two televised on FS1, drew a total of 873,748 viewers.
According to information supplied by the ASU athletic department, this season’s first three have drawn 2,200,273 viewers. Two of those were ESPN telecasts with the other on FS1. That amounts to a viewership increase of 151.8%.
The other benefit of having the game in Texas played on a Thursday was it allowed head coach Kenny Dillingham and some of his assistants to spend an extra day in Texas for recruiting purposes. It is a state where the Sun Devils have focused their efforts the last two years in anticipation of the move to the Big 12.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Thursday night football game paid dividends for ASU
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/playing-texas-state-thursday-night-170647304.html
Author : AZCentral | The Arizona Republic
Publish date : 2024-09-19 17:06:47
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