ESPN has further bolstered the college sports offerings on ESPN+ with a new, multi-year agreement with Conference USA.
The digital deal will deliver more than 175 C-USA games to fans each year, including more than 125 combined football, men’s and women’s basketball games, with more than 100 of the total games on ESPN+ and the remaining games on ESPN3.
In addition, ESPN’s digital platforms become the primary home of multiple C-USA Conference Championships, while also adding exclusive early round men’s and women’s basketball championship action.
ESPN+ — the first multi-sport, direct-to-consumer subscription streaming service from The Walt Disney Company Direct-to-Consumer & International segment in conjunction with ESPN — continues to add to its college sports programming. This now includes live sports from numerous college athletics conferences, including the America East, Atlantic 10, Atlantic Sun, Horizon, Metro Atlantic, MAC, Missouri Valley, Southland, SoCon, Sun Belt and The Ivy League.
“As we look forward to the 2018-19 season and beyond, ESPN+ will offer the most expansive college sports lineup in the industry, right alongside professional leagues such as MLB, NHL, MLS and premier events from Grand Slam tennis, Top Rank boxing, UFC, the PGA Tour and more.” said Burke Magnus, ESPN executive vice president of programming and scheduling. “We are thrilled to grow our relationship with Conference USA and have its 14 member institutions as part of the impressive digital lineup which now features more games from the conference than any other network, including a significant number of post season games.”
Conference USA Commissioner Judy MacLeod said, “ESPN has continually positioned itself on the forefront of digital distribution and emerging platforms, which makes them an ideal fit for us. We look forward to sharing the C-USA brand with their extensive audience for many more years.”
This season, 45 Conference USA football games will be available on ESPN’s digital platforms, with 32 streaming on ESPN+. Among the games carried on the subscription service are the home openers of UAB, Charlotte, Marshall, Middle Tennessee, Rice, Southern Miss, Western Kentucky, and Louisiana Tech and eight conference games in the season’s final three weeks. The addition of C-USA games adds to the more than 100 exclusive games available on ESPN+ this season.