The Big Sky and ESPN have agreed to a five-year extension of its media rights deal that will run from the 2025-26 academic year through the 2029-30 academic year. Big Sky Commissioner Tom Wistrcill originally announced some of the details in July 2024.
The Big Sky and ESPN began their partnership with the 2021-22 academic year. As part of that agreement, ESPN broadcast two football games each season on ESPNU as well as three basketball games. Under the new agreement beginning in 2025, ESPN will broadcast at least four football games each season and two of those games will be televised on ESPN or ESPN. The televised games will be played on Friday or Saturday. All other Big Sky home football games will be streamed on ESPN+.
The two Big Sky games that were televised by ESPN for the 2024 season were Idaho at Montana State on Saturday, October 12, and UC Davis at Montana on November 9. Both contests were shown on ESPN2 with kickoff times of 8:15 Mountain Time. Before agreeing to the deal with ESPN in 2021, Big Sky football games were streamed on PlutoTV beginning with the 2017-2018 academic year in a deal that ran through the 2020-21 academic year.
Photo Credit to Northern Arizona University Athletics
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