The Southern Conference announced today that it has signed a four-year extension with ESPN3.com to deliver a minimum of 45 live regular season league games and conference championships per year.
The addition of games on ESPN3.com extends ESPN's current four-year deal with the Southern Conference, which continues through the 2014-2015 season.
"This agreement marks a significant step for the Southern Conference," said Commissioner John Iamarino. "We have never had as many events available to as wide an audience. With the access and availability of digital content on computers, gaming consoles, tablets and smart phones, more SoCon fans than ever before will be able to watch live events from our 19 championship sports."
ESPN3.com is currently available in more than 70 million households through computers, tablets and smart phones and in 25 million households via Xbox gaming consoles.
As part of the agreement, the eight regular season football games that the league produces for public television will be made available through ESPN3.com. Additionally, eight regular season men's basketball games along with the men's and women's basketball tournament semifinals and the championship game of the women's basketball tournament will be delivered live. The men's basketball tournament championship game is already slated to be televised by either ESPN or ESPN2.
"Producing its own content allows the SoCon to determine the appropriate distribution partners and allows them to work closely in achieving both partners' goals," noted CSE's Senior Vice President Programing, Media Services, Ned Simon.
"We are setting the foundation for long term relationships with this model and ESPN3 is an important piece in SoCon's digital strategy."
The Southern Conference will also produce at least 25 events that will be exclusive to ESPN3.com. Regular season games from football, basketball, baseball, softball, men's soccer, women's soccer and volleyball selected by the conference office and ESPN will be shown in addition to conference championship events.
"This is a groundbreaking deal for ESPN3.com, and is a tribute to the network's growth in becoming a leading destination for college sports," said Damon Phillips, Vice President, ESPN3.com. "We are looking forward to working with the Southern Conference, which recognized ESPN3.com as a key distribution outlet in reaching the college sports fan."
ESPN3.com is available online and via ESPNnetworks.com, through the Xbox LIVE platform to Gold level members and on mobile and tablet devices via the WatchESPN app. Fans consumed over 21.4 million hours of more than 2,000 college sports events in the 2010-2011 season on the network, which is slated to carry over 2,250 games in the next year including college football and bowl championship games, men's and women's college basketball, and NCAA championships including lacrosse, hockey, baseball, softball, wrestling, swimming and diving, track and field and more.