Changes are coming to how you’ll view some West Virginia games across various sports.
The Mountaineers currently have a contract with AT&T SportsNet Pittsburgh to televise various Mountaineer sporting events but beginning in 2020 that will be shifted to ESPN+.
The new agreement will shift the third tier rights of West Virginia to the streaming service, which currently costs $4.99 per month, as part of bigger move across the Big 12 Conference. Each of the teams will be moving their third tier rights either this coming season or in 2020 outside of Oklahoma and Texas who already had existing long-term rights agreements.
Those teams will be included as road teams as part of the new agreement though.
As part of the new agreement one football game per year will be moved there along with the annual Gold-Blue Spring game onto the service. That football game will be the one that has been aired on AT&T such as recent FCS match ups.
The move also will be felt across other sports as all basketball games not scheduled to be televised will be on the streaming service but it will open up more opportunities for other sports such as women's basketball and other conference sports such as volleyball, soccer, wrestling, softball, baseball.
“It was a matter of we all locked arms to say let’s look at ESPN+ as a digital platform that’s branded the Big 12 and take all of our third tier rights to move it to that platform,” athletic director Shane Lyons said.
The ESPN+ streaming service has continued to grow and will provide not only Big 12 Conference games but events across the board for multiple conferences and sports.
It’s a platform that Lyons has been familiar with due to his son playing at Akron and using the service so he has been able to stream and watch games on his laptop or other avenues.
“It also gives you the opportunity when you’re not at home to watch it somewhere else,” he said.
The move is for only the third tier rights until the current television contract expires but with no current network dedicated to the Big 12 Conference it makes for an interesting look in the future.
“What does it mean once we get to ’24 and ’25 with our television rights? How the consumers are consuming the product?” Lyons said.
“We have a lot of younger generation that isn’t going to get ESPN, ESPN2 so how are they getting their content? This gives them an additional platform to pick a game up as well,” he said.
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