Stadium, the replacement for American Sports Network is beginning to take shape. Last week, Stadium released its inaugural college football schedule that includes 25 games. Now Stadium is announcing an additional 15 games will be streamed online and they will be shown exclusively on Facebook.

The schedule will consist of nine Conference USA contests and six from the Mountain West Conference. And the game production will be completely catered to Facebook. Now what does this mean? It means that the games will be custom-produced for the social media service.

Stadium states that it will bring several features just for the Facebook audience including the following:

  • Live curated chat experiences from well-known and well-respected football personalities running concurrently with the live production, closely coordinated with the production truck and on-air presentation.
  • Dedicated social production team and correspondents working the sidelines of the game to bring the in-game experience to the viewing audience at home and engage them in conversation.
  • Ongoing integration of real-time social elements provided by the competing schools

The Facebook schedule begins on Saturday, September 2 with a doubleheader and continues through Saturday, November 25.

Facebook has signed deals to stream live sports, but they were mostly simulcasts of TV productions. These Stadium games will be specifically produced with Facebook in mind. How they will be received is not known, but this is a new step for live sports on the platform.

The schedule of live games produced by Stadium exclusively for Facebook is as follows:

Week 1
Saturday, September 2
Miami (OH) at Marshall, 6:30 p.m. ET
Cal-Davis at San Diego State, 8:30 p.m. ET

Week 2
Thursday, September 7

Idaho State at Utah State, 8:00 p.m. ET

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

Week 4
Saturday, September 23

Florida International at Rice, 7:30 p.m. ET
Utah State at San Jose State, 7:30 p.m. ET

Week 5
Saturday, September 30

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

Week 6
Saturday, October 7

Southern Miss at Texas-San Antonio, 7:00 p.m. ET

Week 7
Saturday, October 14

Wyoming at Utah State, 4:30 p.m. ET

Week 8
Saturday, October 21

Rice at UTSA, 7:00 p.m. ET

Week 9
Saturday, October 28

Florida International at Marshall, 2:30 p.m. ET

Week 10
Saturday, November 4

North Texas at Louisiana Tech, 3:30 p.m. ET

Week 11
Saturday, November 11

Southern Mississippi at Rice, 3:30 p.m. ET

Week 12
Saturday, November 18

Marshall at Texas-San Antonio, 7:00 p.m. ET

Week 13
Saturday, November 25

Florida Atlantic at Charlotte, 2:00 p.m. ET

All of the games will not only be available in the United States on Stadium’s Facebook page, but also globally. And they will be featured under Facebook’s Watch platform.

About Ken Fang

Ken has been covering the sports media in earnest at his own site, Fang's Bites since May 2007 and at Awful Announcing since March 2013.

He provides a unique perspective having been an award-winning radio news reporter in Providence and having worked in local television.

Fang celebrates the four Boston Red Sox World Championships in the 21st Century, but continues to be a long-suffering Cleveland Browns fan.