ESPN to broadcast or stream up to 85 AFL games

[DiamondThief]

The sports network ESPN has partnered with the AFL to broadcast or stream over 60 percent of the AFL's regular season games, as well as one conference championship game and the 2014 ArenaBowl, the AFL announced this morning (Dec. 17). A number of games also will be broadcast on the CBS Sports Network.

From the AFL press release:

CHICAGO – ESPN and the Arena Football League (AFL) have agreed to a multi-year agreement beginning in 2014. The new deal grants ESPN rights to more than 10 regular season and postseason games on its television networks per year, including ArenaBowl and one conference championship game, as well as 75 or more games annually on ESPN3, ESPN’s live multi-screen sports network. ESPN’s video player will also be available on the AFL website, ArenaFootball.com.

The relationship between the AFL and ESPN began more than two decades ago when ESPN televised the very first ArenaBowl live in 1987. Since then, ESPN televised a combination of AFL regular season and playoff games for five years (1995-99), AFL playoff games from 2000-02 and both regular season and playoff games from 2007-08. Additionally, ABC presented the ArenaBowl for five years from 1998-2002.

CBS Sports Network is broadcasting an additional 20 or so games, so this is a huge boost to the league and its teams, the Thunder included. It will give fans both local to the Portland area and out of the area a chance to catch the Thunder in action during their inaugural season. Personally, I think this is a great move. I hadn't heard about local broadcasting of the Thunder's games, so this is absolutely terrific news.

Click here to read the entire press release on the AFL website.

Note: We at SC2C are also on the lookout for the radio broadcasting of the Thunder's games for those contests which will not be broadcast or streamed. We will bring that information to you as it becomes available.

[Kasey]

this is great! there are 126 regular season games so that breaks down to 85 games televised by ESPN alone. broken down evenly among the teams, that's about 12 games per team. we need to find out about the audio broadcasts!

[mark]

That's great news for the AFL!!! It seems so strange talking about an AFL that's not Australian Rules Football....

I'll get in contact with ESPN Australia to see what kind of coverage us Aussies will be getting.

[mark]

Aussie Update: ESPN Australia cannot give me an answer yet as our International broadcasting rights still aren't sorted. I'll ask a few of my journalist friends to see if they've heard anything

[SurferGirl]

Dec 23, 2013 3:15:47 GMT -8 mark said:

Aussie Update: ESPN Australia cannot give me an answer yet as our International broadcasting rights still aren't sorted. I'll ask a few of my journalist friends to see if they've heard anything

Kasey is usually good at finding these things out. She's amidst family at her house right now, but maybe she can figure something out. I would think you could at least stream some of the 75 games that will be on ESPN3.

[mark]

Subscribers to the ESPN channel in Australia get access to ESPN.com.au which allows us to stream a lot of sport that we usually wouldn't get on our versions of ESPN and ESPN 2 (different to the one's you get).
I'm thinking we should get it on that. Well hopefully. I'll keep asking around.

[SurferGirl]

Dec 23, 2013 20:46:33 GMT -8 mark said:

Subscribers to the ESPN channel in Australia get access to ESPN.com.au which allows us to stream a lot of sport that we usually wouldn't get on our versions of ESPN and ESPN 2 (different to the one's you get).
I'm thinking we should get it on that. Well hopefully. I'll keep asking around.

They haven't released the game schedule yet. Maybe then we'll have a better idea of it. We're still trying to also find out if there will be audio to stream of the games. We're all really excited about the team, especially those Portland girls!

[newellbrian]

Very nice!! Hoping some of those will be Portland games!!

[DiamondThief]

Dec 26, 2013 23:32:40 GMT -8 newellbrian said:

Very nice!! Hoping some of those will be Portland games!!

Kasey was figuring it out and said it comes down to an average of 12 ESPN games per AFL team. I hope it is not like the NBA where they only highlight a few teams. It seems to me that they would not do that here. I guess we will have to wait and see.